Name: Mashed Carrots
Ingredients: carrots; butter; pepper; coarse sea salt

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 ↓

Mashed Carrots

Ingredients

carrots
butter
pepper
coarse sea salt

Directions

Scrape and wash the carrots, then soak them in cold water for 30 minutes.
Cook the carrots in boiling water until tender.
Drain the carrots well and mash them with a wooden spoon.
Mix in a generous amount of butter and season with pepper and coarse sea salt.
Heap the mashed carrots in a serving dish and serve hot.

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.

Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,555 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Carrot + buttertop 24% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,083 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).