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Glazed Carrots

A side dish of boiled carrots glazed with butter, sugar, salt, pepper, and meat gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,555 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Glazed Carrots

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the carrots into round balls.

  2. Boil the carrots in water for 5 minutes.

  3. Drain the carrots.

Glaze and cook

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan.

  2. Add the carrots to the melted butter.

  3. Sprinkle the sugar, salt, and pepper over the carrots.

  4. Add the meat gravy to the carrots.

  5. Simmer slowly until the carrots are cooked.

  6. Boil rapidly for a few minutes to evaporate most of the gravy.

Serve

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

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

  2. Butter + meattop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Carrot + meattop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,905 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Pepper + meattop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,777 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Young red carrots
Provide the main body of the dish, becoming tender as they cook through.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour and helping the carrots take on a glossy coat.
Castor sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the carrots brown lightly as the gravy reduces.
Meat gravy
Supplies savoury flavour and liquid that reduces into a glaze clinging to the carrots.

The step that matters

Boil rapidly to reduce the gravy. Reducing the gravy by rapid boiling concentrates its flavour and thickens it into a glaze. If it is left too wet, the carrots stay watery; if reduced too far, it can scorch on the pan and turn bitter.

Swap the carrot

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, pepper, meat. 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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