Name: To Boil Carrots
Ingredients: Carrots; Coarse sea salt; Sugar; Beef broth or veal gravy

Why it works: Carrot and beef are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,606 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

To Boil Carrots

Ingredients

Carrots
Coarse sea salt
Sugar
Beef broth or veal gravy

Directions

Wash the carrots and scrape the skin off lightly or pare them thinly.
Remove any blemishes and cut large carrots into quarters.
Rinse the carrots and place them in a pot of boiling salted water.
Boil very young carrots for 20 to 30 minutes; full-grown ones for 1.5 to 2 hours.
Trim the carrots to even lengths of about 2.5 inches and point one end.
Boil the prepared carrots in salted boiling water for 45 minutes.
Drain the carrots and arrange them upright in a saucepan.
Pour in hot beef broth or veal gravy to half their height.
Add salt and 1 teaspoon of sugar, then boil briskly for 30 minutes.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + beeftop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,606 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Carrot + sugartop 28% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,211 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Sugar + beeftop 37% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together5,435 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).