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To Boil Carrots

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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To Boil Carrots

Why it works: Carrot and beef are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,606 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

To Boil Carrots

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Wash the carrots and scrape the skin off lightly with a sharp knife or pare them thinly.

  2. Remove any blemishes and cut large carrots into quarters.

  3. Rinse the carrots and place them in a pot of boiling salted water.

  4. Boil young carrots for 20-30 minutes and full-grown ones for 1.5 to 2 hours.

  5. Lift the carrots out and drain them well.

  6. Arrange the carrots upright in a saucepan and pour in hot beef broth or veal gravy to half their height.

  7. Add salt to taste and a small teaspoon of sugar, then boil briskly for 30 minutes or longer if needed.

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

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

  2. Butter + beeftop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  5. Carrot + sugartop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,211 recipes

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

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 (butter, beef, sugar):

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

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

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