Name: Carrot Cake Trinidad
Ingredients: 2 cups all-purpose flour,; 1 tsp baking powder,; 1tsp baking soda,; 1tsp salt,; 1tsp ground cinnamon,; 1/4 tsp ground nutmeg,; 1 1/4 cups sugar,; 3/4 cup vegetable oil (don't use corn oil),; 3 eggs,; 1tsp vanilla extract,; 1 3/4 cups shredded carrots,; 1 cup chopped nuts.; Optional: 1 (8-ounce) can crushed pineapple undrained and/ or 1 cup NESTLE TOLL HOUSE Semi-sweet Chocolate Mini Morsels.

Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

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.

Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,917 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Cinnamon + vanillatop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,287 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).
Corn + carrottop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together794 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Cinnamon + carrottop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together981 recipes

Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).
Nutmeg + carrottop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,424 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

All-purpose flour: Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Eggs: Bind the batter and help give the cake its structure and lift.
Vegetable oil: Keeps the cake moist and tender, since it stays liquid when cool.
Sugar: Sweetens the cake and helps it brown and stay moist.
Baking soda: Reacts with acidic ingredients to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Shredded carrots: Add moisture and body, so the cake stays soft and moist.

The step that matters

Cool completely before frosting. A warm cake is fragile and soft, and frosting it early can melt the topping and make it slide off. Cooling lets the crumb set so the frosting stays in place.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, sugar, corn, egg, vanilla):

Arrowrootfits better
Sweet potatofits better
Capsicumfits better
Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, sugar, corn, egg, vanilla. 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.

Ingredient	Portion assumed	kcal
Flour	1 cup (125g) all-purpose	455
Chocolate	1 oz (28g) semisweet	155
Olive Oil	1 tbsp (14g)	119
Pineapple	1 cup chunks (165g)	82
Egg	1 large egg (50g)	78
Corn Oil	1/2 cup kernels (82g)	77
Sugar	1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated	49
Carrot	1 medium (61g)	25
Nutmeg	1 tsp ground (2.2g)	12
Vanilla	1 tsp extract (4ml)	12
Cinnamon	1 tsp ground (2.6g)	6
Salt	1 tsp (6g)	0
Nuts	not in our table	0

Carrot Cake Trinidad