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Potatoes and Carrots

A baked dish of mashed boiled potatoes and carrots mixed with eggs and butter.

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 ↓

Potatoes and Carrots

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Mash the boiled potatoes and carrots together.

  2. Beat the eggs well and mix them with the mashed vegetables.

  3. Add pepper and salt to taste.

Bake and serve

  1. Butter a mold and fill it with the mixture.

  2. Spread butter on top and bake for 30 minutes at 350°F (175°C).

  3. Turn out the dish and garnish with parsley.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Potato + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 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

Potatoes
Provide the starchy bulk that gives the bake its soft, mashed body.
Carrots
Add sweetness, colour and moisture to the mashed base.
Eggs
Bind the mashed vegetables so the bake holds its shape when turned out.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the top brown during baking.

The step that matters

Beat the eggs well before mixing. Well-beaten eggs blend evenly through the mash, so the binding sets uniformly and the bake does not split into wet and dry layers.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Parsnipfits about as well
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, egg, butter, pepper, 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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