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Carrots Au Beurre, or Buttered Carrots

A simple side dish of boiled carrots sautéed in butter with optional parsley, salt, white pepper, and cayenne.

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 ↓

Carrots Au Beurre, or Buttered Carrots

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the carrots

  1. Boil the carrots until tender.

  2. Slice the carrots into ¼ inch thick pieces, or slice first and then boil.

  3. Drain the carrots well.

Make the butter sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over low heat.

  2. Add minced parsley, salt, white pepper, and cayenne to the butter.

Combine and serve

  1. Add the carrots and gently toss until they are evenly coated with the sauce, ensuring it does not boil.

  2. Rewarm cold carrots using the same method if desired.

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. Parsley + peppertop 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. Parsley + white peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 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

Carrots
Provide the main body and sweetness of the dish once cooked until tender.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth coating that carries the seasonings over the carrots.

The step that matters

Melting the butter over low heat without letting it boil. Butter is an emulsion of fat, water and milk solids. High heat can make it boil and separate, leaving greasy, broken sauce instead of a smooth coating that clings to the carrots.

“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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