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Carrots a LA-Maitre D’Hotel

Carrots simmered in a butter, flour, and gravy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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-Maitre D’Hotel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the carrots until tender.

Make the gravy

  1. In a stewpan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the flour and cook until browned.

  3. Stir in the gravy and bring to a simmer.

Finish

  1. Add the carrots and let them stew gently until served.

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
Form the main body of the dish and add a mild, natural sweetness.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and carries flavor, and helps the flour cook smoothly.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the gravy as its starch swells in the hot liquid, after being cooked in butter.
Gravy
Supplies the savory liquid that coats the carrots and keeps them moist.

The step that matters

Cook the flour until browned. Cooking flour in melted butter before adding liquid drives off its raw, pasty taste and lets it thicken smoothly. Stopping early leaves a floury flavor and a weaker, lumpier gravy.

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.

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