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Carrots with Sauce

A dish of boiled carrots simmered in a butter, flour, stock, milk, and cream sauce, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,555 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Carrots with Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the carrots

  1. Slice the carrots and place them in boiling water.

  2. Boil rapidly until half cooked, then drain and slice them thinly.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan, then stir in the flour.

  2. Add the stock and milk, stirring over heat until smooth.

  3. Season with salt and pepper, then add the sliced carrots.

  4. Simmer gently until the carrots are tender, stirring occasionally.

  5. Stir in the cream 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. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 provide sweetness as they cook.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries flavour during the initial melting step.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the stock and milk into a smooth, coating sauce.
Milk
Adds moisture and body to the sauce, making it creamy.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety finish to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour and liquid until smooth. Flour must be cooked with the fat and whisked into the liquid gradually, or lumps form that do not dissolve. Stirring over heat helps the starch swell evenly and thicken the sauce into a smooth coating.

Swap the carrot

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, cream, 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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