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Carrots, with Macaroni and Spinach

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 24% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,509 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Carrots, with Macaroni and Spinach

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the carrots until tender.

  2. Arrange the boiled carrots upright around a mound of boiled spinach in the center of a serving dish.

  3. Place the macaroni in small heaps around the carrots.

  4. Cut the hard-boiled eggs into quarters and distribute them around the spinach and macaroni.

  5. Pour the sauce from the carrots over the macaroni and eggs, and over the spinach.

  6. Serve melted butter on the side.

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 + saucetop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,509 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Carrot + eggtop 35% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Egg + saucetop 39% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,895 recipes

Egg and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,895 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

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sauce):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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