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Carrots a LA Vichy

Carrots à la Vichy are carrots cooked in clarified butter and stock, finished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 ↓

Carrots a LA Vichy

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Wash and scrape the carrots, then cut them into very thin slices.

  2. Season the carrots with salt and pepper, and mix with clarified butter and stock.

Bake

  1. Place the mixture in a well-buttered paper bag, close it up, and fasten with wire clips.

  2. Put the bag on a wire grid in a 350°F (175°C) oven and cook for 25 to 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Slit the bag open and transfer the carrots with the liquid to a hot dish.

  2. Sprinkle with finely chopped parsley and serve hot.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  4. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Carrots
Form the main body of the dish and provide sweetness as they cook.
Clarified butter
Adds fat and rich flavour while helping the carrots cook gently without drying.
Stock
Provides moisture so the carrots steam and become tender inside the sealed bag.

The step that matters

Sealing the paper bag. If the bag is not closed tightly, steam escapes and the carrots dry out or cook unevenly. A well-sealed bag traps moisture so the carrots braise gently in their own liquid.

“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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