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Creamed Carrots

Creamed carrots are carrots cooked and served in a sweet milk and flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and carrot 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 ↓

Creamed Carrots

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the carrots

  1. Cook the carrots until tender, then cut them into slices.

Make the cream sauce

  1. In a saucepan, bring the sweet milk to a boil.

  2. Mix the flour with a little cold milk, then add it to the boiling milk.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in pepper, salt, and butter.

  4. Combine the sauce with the sliced carrots.

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

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + carrottop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,029 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Sweet milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and gives it its creamy body.
Flour
Thickens the milk as it heats, giving the sauce a smooth, coating texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, softening the flavor and smoothing the sauce.
Carrots
Provide the main vegetable and sweetness, carried by the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the flour mixture to the boiling milk. Flour must be smoothed into cold milk first so it does not clump. Stirring it into hot milk lets starch swell unevenly, leaving lumps that a smooth sauce cannot have.

Swap the carrot

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, flour, pepper, 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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