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Carrots in a Puree

A smooth carrot puree made with butter, consommé, sugar, and sauce tournee.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,147 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Carrots in a Puree

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the carrots

  1. Slice and quarter the carrots, removing the pale yellow inside.

  2. Wash the outsides and boil them in plenty of water with salt until tender.

  3. Drain the carrots and place them in a saucepan with butter.

Make the puree

  1. Stir over heat until the butter begins to fry and the carrots are well mashed.

  2. Add a small ladleful of consommé, a little sugar, and salt, stirring until thickened.

  3. Incorporate three tablespoons of sauce tournee and stir for three minutes.

  4. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve into a large dish, adding more consommé if too thick.

  5. Return to the saucepan and heat for four to five minutes before serving.

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. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Carrot + saucetop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,509 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Carrots
Form the main body of the puree, providing flavour, colour and bulk once mashed.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and browns lightly as it fries with the carrots.
Consommé
Adds liquid and savoury depth, loosening the mash to a smooth, pourable texture.
Sauce tournee
Thickens the puree, giving it a smoother, more cohesive body.
Sugar
Adds a touch of sweetness that rounds out the carrot flavour.

The step that matters

Rubbing through the sieve while still hot. Cooked carrot fibres are soft but firm enough to resist; pressing them through a fine sieve while warm breaks them down into a smooth puree. If the mixture cools, it stiffens and becomes harder to pass through, and the texture turns grainy or lumpy.

Swap the carrot

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, sauce. 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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