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Young Carrots

Young carrots boiled, then simmered with stock, butter, and sugar until glazed, finished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Young Carrots

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and scrape the carrots.

  2. Boil them in salted water for about 10 minutes.

  3. Transfer them to cold water and dry with a cloth.

Make the glaze

  1. In a saucepan, combine the carrots, stock, butter, and sugar.

  2. Boil gently for 30 minutes.

  3. Increase heat and boil until the stock reduces to a glaze.

Serve

  1. Sprinkle with chopped parsley and serve with the glaze.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  5. Carrot + sugartop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,211 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Spring carrots
Provide the main body and natural sweetness of the dish.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the glaze coat the carrots with a glossy finish.
Castor sugar
Adds sweetness and browns as the liquid reduces, deepening the glaze's flavour.
Stock
Supplies the liquid that cooks the carrots and reduces into the glaze.

The step that matters

Reducing the stock to a glaze. As water evaporates, the butter and sugar concentrate and thicken into a glaze that clings to the carrots. If the heat is too high or the pan is left unattended, the sugar can scorch and turn bitter before the liquid is reduced.

Swap the carrot

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

  1. Shallotfits about as well
  2. Carrotthe original
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Chivefits about as well

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