Skip to main content
Dessert

Carrot Jam

A sweet preserve made from carrots, lemons, and sugar, cooked until tender and jarred.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,351 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Carrot Jam

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the carrots

  1. Wash and scrape the carrots.

  2. Cut the carrots into dice or thin strips.

Cook the jam

  1. Put the carrots into a saucepan with just enough water to prevent burning.

  2. Cook until tender.

  3. Add the lemon slices and sugar.

  4. Cook together for 45 minutes.

Jar

  1. Pour into dry sterilized 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. Carrot + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,351 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + sugartop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,211 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar 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 and body of the jam as they soften and break down during cooking.
Sugar
Sweetens the jam and helps it thicken and keep as it cooks down.
Lemons
Add acidity and aroma that brighten the sweet carrot flavour.

The step that matters

Cooking with just enough water. Too little water lets the carrots scorch on the base of the pan, while too much makes the jam slow to thicken. Adding only enough water to prevent burning keeps the mixture cooking evenly until the sugar concentrates it.

Swap the carrot

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Kalefits better
  4. Carrotthe original

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

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes