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Glazed Carrots

A simple glazed carrot dish with stock, sugar, butter, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 98,233 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Glazed Carrots

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Blanch the carrots and dry them well.

Glaze the carrots

  1. Place the carrots in a pan with enough stock to cover them and add the lump of sugar.

  2. Boil quickly until the stock reduces to a glaze.

  3. Add the butter and salt, stirring until the liquid is absorbed and the carrots are glazed.

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. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Carrot + buttertop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Carrot + sugartop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,211 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Small young carrots
Provide the main vegetable body that is cooked and coated in the glaze.
Stock
Cooks the carrots and reduces to a syrupy glaze that clings to them.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the reduced stock caramelise into a glossy glaze.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the glaze a smooth, glossy finish.

The step that matters

Reducing the stock to a glaze. If the liquid is boiled too long, the sugar and stock can scorch or over-brown before the carrots are evenly coated. Watching closely as the liquid thickens keeps the glaze glossy rather than burnt.

Swap the carrot

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

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, 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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