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Braised Carrots

Braised carrots simmered in stock and butter, finished with 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 ↓

Braised Carrots

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and scrape the carrots, cutting off the red part thickly.

  2. Cut the red pieces into 2-inch strips and trim neatly.

  3. Boil the carrots in cold water with a little salt until tender, then strain and dry them.

Braise

  1. Melt the butter in a pan, add the carrots, and fry until golden brown.

  2. Add 1 cup of stock and a pinch of sugar, cover with buttered paper, and braise gently for about 1 hour.

  3. Baste the carrots occasionally with the gravy, adding the remaining stock when the gravy reduces.

Serve

  1. Once tender, dish the carrots in a pile, sprinkle with parsley, and serve.

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 + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

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

  3. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Carrot + buttertop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Carrot + sugartop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,211 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Carrots
Are the main vegetable; boiling and then braising softens them until tender.
Butter
Fat that browns the carrots in the pan, adding golden colour and rich flavour.
Stock
Liquid that braises the carrots and reduces to a gravy that coats them.
Castor sugar
Adds a touch of sweetness that balances the carrots' earthy flavour.

The step that matters

Frying the carrots until golden brown. Browning in butter creates flavour through the Maillard reaction. Carrots that are wet from boiling will steam rather than brown, so drying them well first matters.

Swap the carrot

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

  1. Shallotfits about as well
  2. Carrotthe original
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Chivefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, 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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