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To Dress Carrots in the German Way
Melt two ounces of butter in a saucepan. Lay in it 6 carrots cut into thin slices, with a little salt, pepper, grated nutmeg, and 1 teaspoonful of finely minced onion. Let them remain until tender, adding every now and then, as it is required, a little water or stock. Thicken the sauce with a little flour, and about a quarter of an hour before serving add one tablespoonful of finely minced parsley. Time, one hour. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A braise rather than a boil: the carrots cook slowly in butter with liquid added only as it disappears, so the sauce is built from the vegetable's own juices. Nothing here needs updating except the pacing and a few proportions.
- The hingeAdd liquid a few spoonfuls at a time, never enough to submerge the carrots. The point is a glaze that reduces down onto the slices; flooding the pan gives you boiled carrots in thin broth.
- QuantitiesTwo ounces of butter is 4 tablespoons or half a stick. The recipe does not give a weight for the carrots; six medium ones come to roughly 1 lb / 450 g trimmed and peeled.
- TimingThe recipe calls for thin slices and an hour, which suits a genuinely low flame, but check at 30 minutes: sliced thin (1/8 in) they can be tender in 20–25 minutes, and the recipe wants them tender, not crisp.
- ThickeningSprinkle a teaspoon or two of flour over the carrots and stir for a minute before the next addition of liquid, or slake it in cold stock first. Flour dropped into hot sauce off the spoon will lump.
- StockStock gives a far better result than water. Chicken or a light veal stock suits; a strong beef stock will bully the nutmeg.
- NutmegGrate it fresh and use a light hand — a quarter teaspoon at most for this quantity. Pre-ground nutmeg is flat and will simply taste dusty against the butter.
- ParsleyFifteen minutes is long for parsley by modern taste; it dulls to olive. Half the parsley at that stage and the rest stirred in off the heat keeps some colour.
- ServingFive or six as a side dish. Reheats well, and the sauce thickens further overnight — loosen with a spoonful of stock.