Name: Carrot Sweetmeats
Ingredients: small fine-grained carrots; sugar; slips of citron; spices (optional); wine (or juice from canned fruit)

Why it works: Carrot and wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,271 recipes. Both carry 3-sec-butyl-2-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Carrot Sweetmeats

Ingredients

Directions

Boil the carrots in water until tender.
Peel and grate the carrots.
Add sugar, slips of citron, and spices if desired.
Pour in the wine or fruit juice.
Simmer the mixture slowly together.
Store in jars.

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.

Carrot + winetop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,271 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-sec-butyl-2-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Carrot + sugartop 28% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,211 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Sugar + winetop 31% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together9,581 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).