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Carrots with Sauce Hollandaise

Carrots with Sauce Hollandaise is a dish of sliced carrots topped with a butter‑flour hollandaise sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Tarragon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,399 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Carrots with Sauce Hollandaise

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the carrots

  1. Select large winter carrots and cut them into slices about ½ inch thick.

  2. Boil the carrot slices in unsalted water until tender.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a saucepan, mix 2 tablespoons of butter and 2 tablespoons of flour.

  2. Add ½ pint of boiling water and stir until boiling.

  3. Remove from heat and add the yolks of 2 eggs, cooking for 1 minute until jelly-like.

  4. Add 1 tablespoon of butter, 1 tablespoon of tarragon vinegar, ½ teaspoon of salt, and a dash of red pepper.

  5. Arrange the carrots in a serving dish and pour the Sauce Hollandaise over them.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Tarragon + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Carrot + tarragontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together463 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Large winter carrots
Form the main body of the dish and add natural sweetness as they cook.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the hot boiling water.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the sauce.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as their proteins set gently and help bind it smoothly.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and balances its fat.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks off the heat. Egg yolk proteins thicken the sauce when gently warmed. Adding them off the heat and cooking only briefly keeps the sauce smooth, since too much heat can curdle or scramble the yolks.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, egg, tarragon, vinegar, pepper):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, egg, tarragon, vinegar, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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