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Young Carrot Purer

A purée of young carrots cooked with butter, salt, nutmeg, sugar, and white stock, finished with fresh butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 24,377 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Young Carrot Purer

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the carrots into slices.

Cook

  1. Fry the slices in butter with salt, nutmeg, and sugar until light brown.

  2. Moisten with white stock and stew for 10 minutes.

Purée and serve

  1. Pound and beat the mixture through a sieve or squeeze through a tammy.

  2. When ready to serve, warm with fresh butter.

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 + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Nutmeg + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,364 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Nutmeg and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 23,364 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 (in the method)
Form the main body of the purée and provide sweetness and colour.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the slices brown when fried.
White stock
Adds moisture so the carrots stew and soften into a smooth mixture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the carrots brown during frying.

The step that matters

Frying until light brown. Browning the carrot slices in butter and sugar builds caramelised flavour. Frying too hard can scorch the sugar and butter, leaving a bitter taste, so keep the heat moderate and watch the colour closely.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Gingerfits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar. 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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