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Carrots and Turnips

A boiled vegetable dish of carrots or turnips simmered in stock with salt, butter, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 and Turnips

Ingredients

Directions

Boil

  1. Fill a saucepan with water and bring it to a boil.

  2. Add 2 tablespoons of coarse sea salt to the boiling water.

  3. If using young carrots, add them to the saucepan.

  4. Boil for 20 minutes.

  5. Check tenderness by piercing with a fork.

  6. Wash older carrots.

  7. Scrape older carrots.

  8. Cut older carrots into desired shapes.

  9. Boil older carrots for 30 to 45 minutes.

  10. Transfer boiled carrots to a stewpan.

Glaze and serve

  1. Pour in enough stock to cover the carrots.

  2. Add a piece of butter the size of a nut.

  3. Sprinkle 2 teaspoons of castor sugar over the butter.

  4. Place the stewpan on the heat.

  5. Reduce to a glaze over the carrots.

  6. Remove from heat.

  7. 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

Carrots or turnips
Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender when boiled and then glazed.
Stock
Provides liquid that reduces with the sugar and butter into a savory glaze.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that helps form a glossy glaze on the vegetables.
Castor sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the reduced liquid caramelise into a glaze.

The step that matters

Reduce to a glaze over the carrots. If the liquid reduces too far, the sugar and butter can scorch on the pan base before the vegetables are coated. Watching the heat keeps the glaze glossy.

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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