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Carrots Stewed

A stew of sliced carrots cooked with butter, water, salt, pepper, and a sauce of egg, white sauce, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Carrots Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the carrots

  1. Boil the carrots in water for a few minutes.

  2. Rub off the skin with a cloth.

  3. Slice the carrots very thin.

  4. Place the sliced carrots in a saucepan.

  5. Add the butter.

  6. Add 1 cup of water.

  7. Season with pepper and salt.

Cook and finish

  1. Cook until the carrot slices are tender, about 30 minutes, shaking the pan occasionally.

  2. Beat the egg with the white sauce and parsley.

  3. Stir the mixture into the carrots and cook for 5 minutes.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  4. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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 and soften into tender slices during cooking.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the carrots as they cook.
Egg
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the carrots, giving a creamier texture.
White sauce
Provides a creamy base that coats the carrots and adds body.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg mixture into the carrots. Egg proteins set when heated, so if the mixture is added too hot or cooked too long it can curdle or turn grainy. Keep the heat gentle and stir constantly so the sauce stays smooth and thickens evenly.

Swap the carrot

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, parsley, sauce, 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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