Name: Carrots and Turnips
Ingredients: 2 tablespoons coarse sea salt; ½ pint stock; 1 dessertspoon (2 teaspoons) castor sugar; ½ ounce butter; Carrots

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 and Turnips

Ingredients

Directions

Boil a saucepan of water.
Add 1 tablespoon of salt to the boiling water.
If using young carrots, add them to the boiling water and cook for 20 minutes.
Check tenderness with a fork.
If using old carrots, wash, scrape, and cut them into shapes before boiling.
Boil old carrots for 30 to 45 minutes.
Transfer boiled carrots to a stewpan.
Pour in enough stock to cover the carrots.
Add a piece of butter the size of a nut and sprinkle with 2 teaspoons of sugar.
Boil uncovered until reduced to a glaze.
Remove from heat and 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.

Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together98,233 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Butter + carrottop 24% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,083 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Sugar + carrottop 28% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,211 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).