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Stewed Carrots

A savory carrot dish simmered with butter, nutmeg, sugar, stock, and finished with egg yolks and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Stewed Carrots

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 ↓

Stewed Carrots

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the carrots

  1. Scrape and cut the carrots into neat pieces.

  2. Boil the carrots in salted water for 10 minutes, then drain.

Make the sauce

  1. In a stewpan, melt the butter and add the carrots, nutmeg, sugar, pepper, and salt.

  2. Sprinkle the flour over the carrots and fry gently for a few minutes, shaking the stewpan frequently.

  3. Add the white stock and simmer for 20 minutes, stirring and skimming often.

  4. Once the carrots are tender, stir in the beaten egg yolks and cream.

  5. Keep stirring over low heat until blended, but do not boil.

Serve

  1. Serve on a hot dish, garnished with fried bread triangles and chopped 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Carrot + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 carry the sweetness of the stew.
Butter
Adds richness and carries the flavour of the spices through the carrots.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth sauce when fried and then simmered.
White stock
Provides the liquid that cooks the carrots and forms the sauce base.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce when stirred in gently over low heat.
Cream
Adds richness and smoothness to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolks and cream. Egg yolks thicken when heated, but if the sauce boils they can scramble and curdle, so it must stay over low heat while stirring until blended.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, nutmeg, sugar, pepper, flour, egg, cream):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, nutmeg, sugar, pepper, flour, egg, cream. 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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