Skip to main content
Side

Peas and Carrots

A simple side dish of carrots and peas cooked in butter and water, seasoned with salt, pepper, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Peas and Carrots

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the small carrots into small pieces.

Cook

  1. Melt the butter in a kettle, add the carrots, and cover with boiling water.

  2. Cook for 1½ to 2 hours, adding boiling water as needed.

Finish and serve

  1. Half an hour before serving, season with salt, pepper, and parsley, then thicken with flour.

  2. Fifteen minutes before serving, add the canned peas and continue to boil until served.

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. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + peastop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,994 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Small carrots
Main vegetable that softens during long cooking and gives the dish its body and sweetness.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the cooking liquid, carrying flavour through the dish.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid as it heats, giving the dish a body that clings to the vegetables.
Canned peas
Adds tender, sweet pea flavour and colour, added late so they keep their texture.

The step that matters

Adding the canned peas. Canned peas are already cooked, so adding them only fifteen minutes before serving keeps them tender and bright rather than mushy and dull after a long boil.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Lentilsfits better
  3. Black-eyed peafits better
  4. Peasthe original

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

More peas and carrots recipes

Mixed 3 See all 6 →

You might also like

Eggplant CakesEggplant Cakes34 recipesEscalloped Tomatoes (Scalloped Tomatoes)Escalloped Tomatoes (Scalloped Tomatoes)25 recipesParsnip CroquettesParsnip Croquettes12 recipesOnion PuddingOnion Pudding9 recipes