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Carrots Stewed, German Style

A stew of carrots cooked with broth, butter, flour, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 Stewed, German Style

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Prepare the carrots as described in the previous recipe.

  2. When the broth is reduced, add a piece of butter.

  3. Mix in 2 tablespoons of flour and dilute with some broth.

  4. Let it simmer slowly for ten minutes.

  5. Add fine chopped parsley.

  6. Serve.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Carrot + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,029 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

Butter
Adds richness and body to the sauce and helps give it a smooth finish.
Flour
Thickens the broth into a smooth sauce that coats the carrots.
Broth
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding savoury flavour and moisture.

The step that matters

Mix in the flour before diluting. Flour stirred into hot liquid can clump; mixing it smoothly with the butter and then diluting with broth helps it thicken evenly into a smooth sauce.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, parsley):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, parsley. 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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