Name: Ragout of Carrots
Ingredients: Carrots; Butter; Coarse sea salt; Pepper; Chopped parsley; Egg yolks; Bacon (optional); Chives (optional); Stock (optional)

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 ↓

Ragout of Carrots

Ingredients

Directions

Scrape the carrots and scald them in boiling water.
Cut the carrots into long fillets and put them in a pot with butter, salt, pepper, and chopped parsley.
Stew the carrots until tender.
Before serving, add the egg yolks.
For a different version, add small pieces of bacon, salt, pepper, chives, and parsley to the carrots.
Moisten with stock and stew slowly until cooked through.

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.

Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,053 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Parsley + chivetop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,150 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,555 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Carrot + chivetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together419 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Swap the chive

The recipe marks chive as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, butter, pepper, parsley, egg):

Parsnipfits about as well
Capsicumfits about as well
Leekfits about as well
Chivethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, butter, pepper, parsley, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.