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Carrots Au Beurre Roux

Carrots cooked in a butter and flour roux, seasoned with salt, pepper, sweet herbs, and vinegar.

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

Carrots Au Beurre Roux

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the carrots

  1. Boil the carrots until tender.

  2. Slice the boiled carrots.

Make the sauce

  1. In a skillet, melt the butter and fry the carrot slices until browned.

  2. Season with salt, pepper, and sweet herbs.

  3. Sprinkle in the flour and stir well.

  4. Add vinegar and mix until combined.

Serve

  1. Serve hot.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Carrot + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,029 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 provide mild sweetness when browned.
Butter
Supplies fat for frying, adding richness and browning the carrot slices.
Flour
Thickens the melted butter into a roux that gives the sauce body.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the richness of the butter.

The step that matters

Stirring in the flour. Flour must be stirred evenly into the hot butter so its starch separates and disperses without lumps. Thorough stirring also lets the flour cook, which thickens the sauce and removes the raw floury taste.

Swap the carrot

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, flour, vinegar, butter. 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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