Name: Spring Carrots
Ingredients: stalks of carrots; salt; 1 teaspoon chopped parsley; ¼ cup lemon juice; plain white sauce

Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Spring Carrots

Ingredients

Directions

Leave the stalks on the carrots.
Scrape the carrots and boil them in salted water until tender.
Dress the carrots with plain white sauce, adding chopped parsley and lemon juice.

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.

Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,053 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Carrot + lemontop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,351 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Parsley + saucetop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together6,693 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Carrot + saucetop 24% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,509 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).