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Carrots or Turnips

Carrots or turnips boiled with salt, stock, butter, and sugar, then reduced to a glaze.

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 or Turnips

Ingredients

Directions

Boil

  1. Boil a saucepan of water.

  2. Add 2 tablespoons of coarse sea salt when the water is boiling.

  3. For young carrots, boil them for 20 minutes.

  4. For older carrots, wash, scrape, and cut them to size before boiling for 30-45 minutes.

  5. Check tenderness with a fork.

  6. Rub the boiled carrots clean with a cloth.

Glaze and serve

  1. In a stewpan, place the boiled carrots and cover with good stock.

  2. Add ½ ounce of butter and sprinkle with 2 teaspoons of castor sugar.

  3. Boil in the stewpan until reduced to a glaze.

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
Provide the vegetable that becomes tender and is coated in the glaze.
Butter
Adds fat and richness that helps the glaze turn glossy and smooth.
Castor sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the reduced liquid caramelise into a glaze.
Good stock
Supplies the liquid that reduces down with the sugar and butter into a glaze.

The step that matters

Reducing the stock to a glaze. Boiling too briskly or too long can scorch the sugar and butter or reduce the liquid to a dry, sticky residue. Stop when the liquid turns syrupy and coats the carrots.

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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