Skip to main content
Main

Carrots a LA MAlTEE d’hoTEL

Carrots cooked with butter, flour, and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Carrots a LA MAlTEE d’hoTEL

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the carrots

  1. Boil the carrots until tender.

Make the gravy

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat and add the flour; cook until browned.

  2. Stir in the gravy and then add the boiled carrots.

  3. Let the carrots stew for a few 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Carrot + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,029 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Provide the main body and sweetness of the dish once boiled until tender.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the flour cook into a roux.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as it cooks with the butter until browned.
Gravy
Supplies the savory liquid that coats and flavors the carrots.

The step that matters

Cooking the butter and flour until browned. Flour cooked in fat must be stirred steadily; if it burns it turns bitter and dark, and if it is undercooked the gravy tastes raw and pasty. Browning develops nutty flavor while the starch is still able to thicken the sauce.

Swap the carrot

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes