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Melted Butter Carrots

Carrots cooked in butter, salt, and sugar, then thickened with cornflour and milk to a buttery sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Melted Butter Carrots

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the carrots

  1. Prepare the carrots by washing them and rubbing off the skins with a hot, dry cloth.

  2. Place the carrots flat in a stewpan and add the butter, salt, and sugar.

  3. Cover the carrots with boiling water and bring to a boil.

Cook and thicken

  1. Once boiling, remove the lid and let most of the moisture evaporate.

  2. Transfer the carrots to a dish and add milk equal to the liquid in the pan.

  3. Thicken the mixture with cornflour until it reaches the consistency of melted butter.

  4. Stir briskly for a minute or two, then pour the sauce over the carrots.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Carrot + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,259 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

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

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

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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, cooked until tender in butter and water.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the carrots a glossy, smooth finish.
Milk
Adds creaminess and liquid to the sauce, mellowing its flavour.
Cornflour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth sauce as it heats.

The step that matters

Thickening with cornflour. Cornflour must be stirred in evenly and brought to a simmer so its starch swells and thickens the sauce. Added in clumps or not stirred enough, it leaves lumps or a thin, uneven sauce.

Swap the carrot

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Carrotthe original

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