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Mixed Peas and Carrots

A simple boiled vegetable side of peas and carrots served with butter and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Mixed Peas and Carrots

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the vegetables

  1. Boil the peas in a pot of water.

  2. When the peas are half done, add the carrots.

Finish and serve

  1. Prepare a butter sauce by melting the butter and mixing it with the cooked vegetables.

  2. Add chopped parsley and season with salt.

  3. Cook the bread or flour dumplings for 10 minutes before serving.

  4. Serve the peas and carrots with the dumplings.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Peas + carrottop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,994 recipes

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

  4. Peas + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together804 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexyl acetate (fruity, apple).

  5. Peas + parsleytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,885 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Peas
Form the main body of the dish and provide sweet, tender texture.
Carrots
Add sweetness, color, and a firmer bite alongside the peas.
Butter
Adds richness and coats the vegetables with a smooth, glossy fat.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Beansfits about as well
  3. Lentilsfits about as well
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, butter, parsley, bread. 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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