Skip to main content
Main

577 Carrots

A simple boiled carrot dish finished with butter and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

577 Carrots

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut off the green tops and wash the carrots thoroughly.

  2. Scrape the carrots and remove any black specks.

  3. If large, cut them in halves or quarters lengthwise, then into convenient-sized pieces.

  4. Keep the carrots in cold water until ready to cook.

Boil

  1. In a saucepan, bring salted water to a boil (1 dessert spoon of salt per quart).

  2. Add the carrots to the boiling water.

  3. Boil until tender, about 1 hour for large carrots or less for young ones.

  4. Check for doneness with a fork; if tender, drain the carrots.

Butter and serve

  1. Return the drained carrots to the saucepan.

  2. Add the butter to the saucepan.

  3. Gently shake the carrots for 1-2 minutes until coated with butter.

  4. Arrange the carrots on a dish.

  5. Sprinkle with chopped parsley.

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Carrots
Cooking softens their fibrous structure until they are tender enough to eat.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, coating the carrots and carrying flavour.

The step that matters

Boil until tender. Carrots vary in size and age, so doneness must be checked with a fork rather than by time alone. Undercooked carrots stay firm and starchy, while overcooking makes them mushy and dull in flavour.

Swap the carrot

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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.

More boiled carrots recipes

and Turnips 5 See all 49 →

You might also like

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes