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Puree of Carrots with Rice

A puree of carrots and rice cooked in stock with butter, sugar, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,310 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Puree of Carrots with Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the carrots

  1. Wash and scrape the carrots, removing the red part.

  2. Parboil the carrots for 5 minutes, then drain.

Make the puree

  1. In a stewpan, melt 3 oz. of butter with a sliced onion and the white part of the leek.

  2. Add the carrots and stir over medium heat for a few minutes.

  3. Pour in 2 quarts of stock, season with salt, pepper, and a little nutmeg.

  4. Reduce heat and simmer until the carrots are tender.

  5. Pass the mixture through a fine sieve or tammy.

Thicken and serve

  1. Return the puree to the heat, adding more stock, sugar, and 1 oz. of cornflour mixed with a little milk or water.

  2. Stir well and simmer for 15 minutes.

  3. Add ½ lb. of rice boiled in beef broth, skim, and serve with bread sippets.

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 + leektop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,310 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Carrot + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Leek + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together152 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Leek + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together161 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Carrots
Form the bulk of the puree and supply its sweetness and body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying the flavour of the aromatics.
Cornflour
Thickens the puree as it simmers, giving it a smooth, body-rich texture.
Stock
Provides the cooking liquid and savoury base for the puree.
Rice
Adds body and starch, helping the soup feel fuller.

The step that matters

Passing the puree through a fine sieve or tammy. Cooked carrot fibres stay coarse unless the mixture is pushed through a fine sieve, so a smooth texture depends on passing it fully while it is hot and soft.

Swap the leek

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits about as well
  4. Leekthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, butter, sugar, rice, nutmeg, pepper. 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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