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Creamed Young Carrots

Creamed Young Carrots is a buttery, creamy carrot dish with egg yolks and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Creamed Young Carrots

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the carrots

  1. Scald the carrots for five minutes.

  2. Rub off the skins with a rough cloth.

  3. Slice the carrots crosswise and then thin.

Cook the carrots

  1. In a saucepan, heat the butter, hot water, salt, and pepper.

  2. Add the sliced carrots and cook gently, covered, for 30 minutes.

Make the cream and finish

  1. In another saucepan, heat the cream and chopped parsley until boiling.

  2. Remove from heat and pour over the beaten egg yolks, then stir well.

  3. Pour the mixture over the carrots and cook for one minute.

  4. 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 + 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. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  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 dish and provide the sweet, tender texture once cooked.
Egg yolks
Thicken the cream mixture and enrich the sauce as they gently set with heat.
Cream
Adds richness and smoothness, helping the sauce coat the carrots.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour, enriching the carrots as they cook.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk mixture. Egg yolks set when heated, so the hot cream should be poured in gradually and stirred well to avoid scrambling. Cooking gently after adding keeps the sauce smooth and creamy.

Swap the carrot

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, cream, parsley, 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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