Skip to main content
Main

Carrots Pickled

A pickled carrot dish preserved in vinegar with cloves and bay leaves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,873 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Carrots Pickled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the carrots

  1. Trim and parboil the carrots for 2 minutes, then peel them.

  2. Place the carrots in a saucepan with boiling water lightly salted and cook until nearly done.

Pickle

  1. Drain the carrots and place them in earthen jars, covering them with cold boiled vinegar.

  2. Let the jars sit overnight, then draw off the vinegar and boil it, adding a little salt.

  3. Put the carrots in a 2-quart jar and pour the cooled vinegar over them to cover.

  4. Add the cloves and bay leaves, then cover the jar tightly and store in a cool place.

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 + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Vinegar + clovetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Carrot + vinegartop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,892 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Carrots
Form the bulk of the dish and, once cooked and pickled, give a firm, crisp-tender texture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and helps preserve the carrots.
Cloves
Add a warm, aromatic spice flavor to the pickling liquid.
Bay leaves
Add a subtle herbal aroma that infuses the vinegar and carrots.

The step that matters

Cook the carrots only until nearly done. The carrots keep softening in the vinegar, so cooking them fully before pickling can leave them mushy. Stopping just short of tender leaves them firm after they are pickled.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, clove):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, clove. 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