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Carrot Preserve

A sweet preserve made from carrots, sugar, lemon, and orange.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Carrot Preserve

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the carrots.

  2. Scrape the carrots.

  3. Steam the carrots until soft.

  4. Chop the carrots finely.

Make the jam

  1. Mix the chopped carrots with the lemon juice, lemon rind, orange, and sugar.

  2. Cook gently for one hour or until the mixture thickens when tested on a cold dish.

Seal

  1. Seal in jars.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Carrot + orangetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Carrot + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,351 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Carrots
Provide the bulk of the jam and its body as they break down during cooking.
Sugar
Sweetens the jam and, as it dissolves and concentrates, helps it set and preserves it.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and supports setting.
Orange
Adds citrus aroma and sweetness to the jam.

The step that matters

Cook gently until the mixture thickens. Sugar and pectin-containing fruit set only when enough water evaporates and the sugar concentrates. Cooking too briefly leaves a runny jam, while overcooking can scorch the sugar and make it dark and sticky. Testing on a cold dish shows whether it has reached setting point.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, lemon, orange):

  1. Arrowrootfits about as well
  2. Sweet potatofits about as well
  3. Carrotthe original
  4. Capsicumfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, orange. 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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