Name: Potatoes and Carrots
Ingredients: 14 lbs boiled potatoes; ½ lb boiled carrots; 2 eggs; 2 oz butter; pepper to taste; salt to taste; parsley for garnish

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 ↓

Potatoes and Carrots

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Mash the potatoes and carrots together.
Beat the eggs well and mix them with the vegetables.
Add seasoning to taste.

Bake and serve

Butter a mold and fill it with the mixture.
Spread butter on top.
Bake for 4 hours.
Turn out and garnish with parsley.

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.

Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,053 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Potato + carrottop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,107 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,855 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Potatoes: Form the bulk of the bake, giving it body and a soft, starchy texture.
Carrots: Add sweetness, colour and extra moisture to the mash.
Eggs: Bind the mashed vegetables so the bake holds its shape when turned out.
Butter: Adds richness and fat, and helps the top brown and stay moist.

Swap the potato

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

Parsnipfits about as well
Capsicumfits about as well
Leekfits about as well
Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, egg, butter, pepper, parsley. 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.