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Carrots a l’Allemande

A carrot dish simmered in butter, sugar, and milk, served 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 ↓

Carrots a l’Allemande

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Parboil the carrots with salt, then drain them.

Cook the sauce

  1. In a stewpan, combine the carrots, butter, sugar, and milk.

  2. Let the mixture boil gently.

Serve

  1. Serve the carrots in their sauce, sprinkled with chopped parsley.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Carrot + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,259 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
The main vegetable; parboiling softens them before they finish cooking in the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches the sauce and gives it a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that rounds out the milk and the carrots' earthy flavor.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid that becomes the sauce as it cooks down.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture gently. Keep the milk at a gentle boil, not a hard one. Milk scorches on the pan bottom and can boil over quickly, and vigorous heat can make the sauce separate or turn unevenly thick.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, butter, sugar, milk. 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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