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Ragout of Carrots

A simple carrot ragout cooked with butter, milk, and egg yolk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Ragout of Carrots

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the carrots

  1. Scrape and wash the carrots thoroughly.

  2. Blanch the carrots in boiling water for a moment, then remove and slice them.

Cook

  1. In a saucepan, combine the sliced carrots with butter, salt, pepper, and chopped parsley.

  2. Add milk to prevent burning and cook until the carrots are tender.

  3. Stir in the beaten egg yolk just before serving.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 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 + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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 ragout and provide its sweet, tender texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the carrots.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps prevent the carrots from scorching in the pan.
Egg yolk
Thickens the sauce gently and adds richness when stirred in off the heat.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg yolk just before serving. Egg yolk thickens when heated, so it can curdle or scramble if it sits in hot liquid or is overheated. Adding it at the end, with the pan off the heat or on very low heat, lets it enrich the sauce smoothly.

Swap the carrot

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

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

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