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Carrot and Sausage Stew

A stew of sausages, carrots, onions, and potatoes simmered in vegetable water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Carrot and Sausage Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Scrape and slice the carrots; peel the onions and potatoes.

  2. Cook the carrots, onions, and potatoes until very tender, then drain and reserve the water.

Cook the sausages

  1. Boil the sausages in the reserved vegetable water for 30 minutes, then drain.

  2. Melt the fat in a pan, add the sausages, and fry until golden brown. Keep hot.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Add the flour to the fat in the pan and fry for five minutes.

  2. Gradually add the vegetable water, bring to a boil, and continue boiling for eight minutes.

  3. Add the cooked vegetables, season to taste, slice the sausages, mix in, and serve.

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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,029 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a sauce when fried in fat and then simmered with the water.
Potatoes
Break down when cooked until very tender, adding body and starch to the stew.
Carrots
Soften when cooked and add sweetness and colour to the stew.
Sausages
Provide the main protein and savoury flavour, browned in fat for extra colour and taste.
Onions
Soften and turn sweet when cooked, adding savoury depth to the stew.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour in the fat. Frying the flour in the fat for five minutes cooks out its raw starchy taste. Adding the water too soon can leave lumps, so the flour should be fully mixed into the fat first.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, potato, flour):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, potato, 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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