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Dessert

Carrot Pudding

A baked carrot pudding made with grated carrots, clarified butter, eggs, sugar, brandy, candied peel, and puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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

  1. Wash and scrape the carrots, then boil them in a large pot of water until soft.

  2. Remove the skins and grate ¼ pound of the middle part of the carrots.

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, mix the grated carrots with ½ cup of clarified butter, 4 beaten eggs, sugar, and brandy to taste.

Bake

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Place puff pastry in a baking dish, pour the carrot mixture on top, and add candied orange or lemon peel.

  3. Bake until set and golden brown.

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

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

  2. Brandy + orangetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,706 recipes

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

  3. Butter + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,127 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. 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 main body of the pudding and add natural sweetness and moisture.
Clarified butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the pudding a smooth, tender texture.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set during baking to give the pudding its structure.
Puff pastry
Forms a crisp, flaky base that browns in the oven under the filling.

The step that matters

Bake until set and golden brown. Eggs set as they heat, so underbaking leaves the custard-like filling loose, while overbaking can make it dry and rubbery. Watch for a firm centre and even golden colour.

Swap the carrot

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

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. 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.

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