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Carrots, to Boil

Boiled young and old carrots glazed with sugar and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 98,233 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Carrots, to Boil

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the carrots

  1. Wash young carrots.

  2. Boil young carrots in lightly salted water until tender, about 20 minutes.

  3. Wash old carrots. Scrape old carrots.

  4. Cut old carrots into desired shapes.

  5. Boil old carrots in salted water until tender, 45 to 90 minutes.

Glaze and serve

  1. Drain the carrots.

  2. Place the carrots in a saucepan with enough stock to barely cover them. Add a lump of sugar to the saucepan. Add a slice of butter to the saucepan.

  3. Boil the sauce quickly with the lid off until it thickens and coats the carrots. Shake the carrots in the glaze.

  4. 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. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  3. 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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and gloss, helping the sauce emulsify into a glaze that coats the carrots.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, as the liquid reduces, helps the glaze thicken and turn sticky.
Stock
Forms the cooking liquid that reduces into the savoury base of the glaze.

The step that matters

Boil the sauce quickly with the lid off. Rapid boiling with the lid off evaporates water and concentrates the stock and sugar, so the sauce thickens and coats the carrots rather than staying thin and watery.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter):

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter. 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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