Name: Carrot Pudding
Ingredients: ¼ pound carrots; ¼ pound clarified butter; 4 eggs; sugar to taste; brandy to taste; candied orange or lemon peel; putty paste for the bottom

Why it works: Carrot and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Carrot Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the carrots

Wash and scrape the carrots.
Boil them in a large quantity of water until soft.
Remove the outer skin of the carrots.
Grate ¼ pound of the middle part of the carrots.

Make the pudding

In a bowl, mix the grated carrots with ¼ pound of clarified butter.
Add 4 well-beaten eggs, sugar, and brandy to taste.
Pour the mixture into a dish lined with putty paste at the bottom.
Top with candied orange or lemon peel.

Bake

Bake.

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.

Carrot + orangetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together737 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Brandy + orangetop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,706 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Butter + brandytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,127 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together98,233 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 pudding, with natural sweetness once cooked soft.
Clarified butter: Adds richness and a smooth, moist texture to the grated carrot mixture.
Eggs: Bind the mixture and help it set into a firm, custard-like pudding when baked.

Swap the carrot

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

Sweet potatofits better
Capsicumfits better
Shallotfits about as well
Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, sugar, brandy, 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.