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Peas and Carrots

A simple boiled vegetable side dish of peas and carrots with butter, salt, pepper, sugar, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Peas and Carrots

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the vegetables

  1. Melt the butter in a kettle.

  2. Add the peas and carrots, then cover with boiling water.

  3. Cook for 1.5 to 2 hours, adding boiling water as necessary.

Season and thicken

  1. About 30 minutes before serving, season with salt, pepper, minced parsley, and sugar.

  2. Thicken with flour mixed with cold water, then let boil for a few minutes.

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

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Peas
Provide the main body and sweet, tender bulk of the dish.
Carrots
Add sweetness and a firmer texture that holds up during long cooking.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the cooking liquid.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a light sauce when boiled.

The step that matters

Thickening with flour and cold water. Flour must be mixed smoothly with cold water before adding it to hot liquid, otherwise it clumps. Boiling for a few minutes fully activates the starch so the sauce thickens and loses any raw flour taste.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Lentilsfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, butter, pepper, sugar, flour, 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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