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Carrots Stewed for Garniture

Stewed carrots in butter sauce, seasoned with parsley, salt, pepper, and a pinch of sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 for Garniture

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the carrots

  1. Cut the carrots into short, thick julienne strips.

  2. Boil the carrots until tender, then drain them.

Cook and season

  1. In a flat saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat until it begins to brown.

  2. Add the drained carrots to the saucepan and toss them well in the butter.

  3. Stir in the chopped parsley, season with salt, pepper, and a pinch of sugar.

  4. Add the butter sauce and mix well.

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. Parsley + peppertop 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. Sauce + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Carrots
Form the main body of the dish and carry the buttery coating.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and browning gives a nutty flavour.
Butter sauce
Adds moisture and extra buttery flavour to coat the carrots.

The step that matters

Browning the butter. Butter that browns too far turns bitter and dark, while too little browning leaves a flat flavour. Watching the colour closely over medium heat gives a nutty taste without burning the milk solids.

Swap the carrot

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

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Carrotthe original
  4. Mustardfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sauce, parsley, pepper, sugar. 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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