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Carrots a LA Roulette

A carrot dish cooked with butter, flour, stock, egg yolk, and loaf sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Carrots a LA Roulette

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the carrots

  1. Scrape and slice the carrots.

  2. Boil the carrots in water with salt and 1 tablespoon of butter until cooked.

  3. Drain the carrots.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt 1 tablespoon of butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the flour and mix well.

  3. Season the mixture with salt and pepper.

  4. Add the stock and stir until smooth.

  5. Remove from heat.

  6. Mix in the egg yolk and loaf sugar.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the drained carrots, shake to coat, and 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. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Carrot + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,029 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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 natural sweetness and texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and helps build the smooth base of the sauce.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the butter and stock into a smooth sauce as it cooks.
Stock
Provides the liquid base and savoury flavour of the sauce.
Egg yolk
Enriches and thickens the sauce, giving it a smooth, velvety body.

The step that matters

Mix in the egg yolk and loaf sugar. Egg yolk can scramble if the sauce is too hot, so it is added after removing the pan from heat. Gentle warmth thickens it smoothly, while direct heat curdles the yolk.

Swap the carrot

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, pepper, egg, sugar. 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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