Skip to main content
Main

Stewed Carrots, Indian Style

A stew of young carrots simmered with butter, onion, curry powder, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,555 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Stewed Carrots, Indian Style

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the carrots

  1. Place the trimmed carrots in a pot and cover with water.

  2. Season with salt, pepper, and sugar, then add 1 tablespoon of butter.

  3. Cook the carrots until tender.

Make the sauce

  1. In a separate saucepan, melt the remaining butter and lightly fry the sliced onion.

  2. Stir in the flour and curry powder, cooking for 1 minute while stirring.

  3. Add the cream and some of the carrot broth to create a clear sauce.

Combine and simmer

  1. Combine the cooked carrots with the sauce, season with salt and pepper, and simmer for 15 minutes.

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

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

  2. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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 soften into a tender, sweet base.
Butter
Adds richness and carries the flavour of the onion and spices.
Onion
Softens and sweetens as it fries, adding savoury depth to the sauce.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the cream and carrot broth into a smooth sauce.
Curry powder
Adds warm spice aroma and flavour to the sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and body, softening the sauce's texture.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour and curry powder into the butter and onion. Cooking the flour in fat for about a minute removes its raw taste and helps prevent lumps. Adding the cream and broth gradually while stirring keeps the sauce smooth and thickened.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, pepper, sugar, butter, flour, cream):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, pepper, sugar, butter, flour, cream. 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.

You might also like

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes