Name: Carrot Pudding
Ingredients: ¼ pound carrots; ¼ pound clarified butter; 4 eggs; sugar to taste; brandy to taste; candied orange or lemon peel; puff pastry

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

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the carrots

Wash and scrape the carrots, then boil them in a large pot of water until soft.
Remove the outer skin and grate ¼ pound of the middle part of the carrots.

Make the filling

In a bowl, mix the grated carrots with ¼ pound of clarified butter, 4 beaten eggs, sugar, and brandy to taste.

Bake and serve

Line a baking dish with puff pastry and pour the carrot mixture into it.
Top with candied orange or lemon peel and bake at 350°F (175°C) until set.

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: Form the bulk of the pudding and give it moisture and a sweet, earthy flavour.
Clarified butter: Adds richness and fat, giving the pudding a tender texture.
Eggs: Bind the mixture and set it into a custard-like texture when baked.
Puff pastry: Forms a crisp, flaky base that holds the filling while it bakes.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Baking only until the egg mixture firms keeps the custard tender; overbaking causes the eggs to tighten and turn dry and grainy.

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.