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Carrots.

Carrots boiled and served upright with a thickened beef gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Carrots.

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.

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the carrots

  1. Select good carrots of equal size.

  2. Cut the tops of the carrots into even lengths of about 2.5 inches.

  3. Trim one end of each carrot to a point to resemble a sugar loaf.

  4. Boil the carrots in salted water for 45 minutes.

  5. Drain the carrots.

Braise in broth

  1. Arrange the carrots upright in a broad saucepan.

  2. Pour in hot beef broth or gravy to half their height.

  3. Add salt and 1 teaspoon of sugar to the pot.

  4. Boil briskly for 30 minutes or longer if needed.

  5. Keep the carrots hot.

Finish and serve

  1. Thicken brown gravy with 1 tablespoon of parsley and a little lemon juice.

  2. Serve the carrots upright with the thickened gravy or a white sauce.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Carrot + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,351 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,606 recipes

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

  5. Beef + parsleytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,866 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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, sweet pieces when boiled.
Beef broth or gravy
Supplies savory flavor and liquid that the carrots absorb while boiling down.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the savory broth and the tartness of lemon.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the gravy and offsets its richness.

The step that matters

Boil briskly for 30 minutes. Liquid must reduce and thicken around the carrots while they stay upright in shallow broth. Too gentle a simmer leaves the gravy thin, and letting it boil dry scorches the sugar and browns the bottoms.

“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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