Skip to main content
Side

Carrots, to Dress, in the German Way

A German-style carrot side dish cooked with butter, stock, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Carrots, to Dress, in the German Way

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the carrots

  1. Wash and scrape the carrots, then cut them into rings about ½ inch thick.

Cook the carrots

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the carrots, salt, nutmeg, parsley, and onion to the butter.

  3. Toss the mixture over the heat for a few minutes until the carrots are coated in butter.

  4. Pour in the stock and simmer gently until the carrots are nearly tender.

Make the flour browning

  1. In another saucepan, melt a small piece of butter, then stir in the flour and cook until golden brown.

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. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Carrot + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Carrots
Provide the main bulk, natural sweetness, and tender texture when simmered.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour, coating the carrots and cooking the flour.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid when cooked in fat to form a roux.
Stock
Supplies the liquid that simmers the carrots until tender and moist.
Onion
Adds savoury aroma that builds the flavour base of the dish.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour until golden brown. Flour must be cooked in butter long enough to lose its raw taste and to thicken well. Cooking it too briefly leaves a pasty flavour, while cooking it too long can scorch it and make it bitter.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, butter, nutmeg, parsley, flour. 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.

You might also like

Onion PuddingOnion Pudding9 recipesEggplant CakesEggplant Cakes34 recipesEscalloped Tomatoes (Scalloped Tomatoes)Escalloped Tomatoes (Scalloped Tomatoes)25 recipesParsnip CroquettesParsnip Croquettes12 recipes