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Young Carrots a LA Parisienne

Sautéed young carrots with butter, parsley, sugar, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Young Carrots a LA Parisienne

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the carrots

  1. Boil the carrots for five minutes.

  2. Remove the skins using a coarse cloth.

  3. Return the carrots to the fire and cook until tender.

  4. Slice the carrots lengthwise into three pieces for medium-sized and two pieces for small.

Sauté and serve

  1. Heat 1 tablespoon of butter in a frying pan for each cup of carrots until bubbling.

  2. Add the sliced carrots and sauté quickly on both sides.

  3. Before serving, sprinkle with chopped parsley, white sugar, pepper, and salt.

  4. Serve very 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.

  1. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 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 + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

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

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Young carrots
Form the main body of the dish, cooked until tender and then sautéed for flavour.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and browns the carrot slices when sautéed in the pan.
White sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the savoury seasonings and encourages light browning on the carrots.

The step that matters

Sauté quickly on both sides. Sugar in the carrots caramelises and browns quickly at high heat, so brief, hot sautéing gives colour and flavour without overcooking the carrots, which were already tendered by boiling.

Swap the carrot

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

  1. Carrotthe original
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Shallotfits less well
  4. Potatofits less well

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