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Stewed Carrots, Indian Style

A mild carrot stew flavored with curry powder, butter, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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. Cover the trimmed carrots with water in a pot.

  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.

  3. Add the cream and some 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

Butter
Adds richness and carries the onion's flavour into the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the butter.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the sauce.
Curry powder
Provides the spiced aroma that defines the dish.
Onion
Adds sweetness and savoury depth to the sauce as it softens.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour and curry powder, cooking for 1 minute. The flour must cook in the hot butter for the full minute so it loses its raw taste and thickens the sauce smoothly. Stirring constantly keeps it from clumping or scorching, and it helps bloom the curry powder's aroma.

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.

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