Name: Carrots in Their Own Juice
Ingredients: Carrots; Salt; Pepper; Butter; Flour; Minced parsley (optional); Thick cream (optional); Gravy (optional)

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 in Their Own Juice

Ingredients

Directions

Wash the carrots thoroughly and scrape or lightly peel them, removing any discolored parts.
Bring a pot of salted water to a boil and slice the carrots thickly.
Add the carrots to the boiling water, ensuring they are just covered, and pour off any excess water.
Boil gently until the carrots are tender, then quickly evaporate most of the water, leaving about a tablespoon.
Season with pepper and add a small amount of butter rolled in flour, tossing gently until the juice thickens and coats the carrots.
Serve immediately. Optionally, sprinkle with minced parsley, or mix in thick cream and flour, or add gravy.

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.

Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,053 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,555 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, pepper, butter, flour, cream):

Parsleythe original
Nutmegfits about as well
Celeryfits less well
Marjoramfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, pepper, butter, flour, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.