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Fillet of Carrot

A dish of diced carrots simmered in brown sauce, seasoned with pepper and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,555 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Fillet of Carrot

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and scrape the carrots.

  2. Cut the carrots into slices about ½ inch thick.

  3. Dice the sliced carrots.

  4. Boil the diced carrots in water for 5 minutes.

  5. Drain the carrots.

Stew

  1. Place the drained carrots in a stewpan.

  2. Add the brown sauce to the stewpan.

  3. Sprinkle the carrots with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  4. Stew the carrots until tender.

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 + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + saucetop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,509 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sauce + peppertop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,303 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sauce and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,303 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

Young carrots
Provide the main body and sweetness of the dish as they soften during stewing.
Brown sauce
Adds moisture and savory flavor as the carrots simmer in it.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, 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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