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Carrots with Parsley Sauce

Boiled carrots topped with a parsley-infused white sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 with Parsley Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the carrots

  1. Scrub and wash the carrots.

  2. Cook the carrots in a little water or steam until tender.

  3. Slice the cooked carrots and place them in a saucepan.

Make the parsley sauce

  1. In a separate pan, make a white sauce by melting butter, adding flour, and gradually whisking in milk until thickened.

  2. Stir in a handful of finely chopped parsley into the white sauce.

Combine and serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the carrots and let them simmer for 10 minutes.

  2. Serve hot with baked potatoes.

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

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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 its sweetness and texture.
Butter
Provides fat and richness, and forms the base of the white sauce with flour.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth white sauce as it cooks.
Milk
Forms the liquid of the white sauce, which thickens as the starch swells.
Parsley
Adds fresh, herbal aroma to the creamy sauce.

The step that matters

Thickening the white sauce. Flour must be cooked into the melted butter and milk must be added gradually while whisking. This prevents lumps and lets the starch swell evenly, giving a smooth, thickened sauce.

Swap the carrot

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

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

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