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Carrot Pudding

A baked carrot pudding made with carrots, bread, butter, sugar, marmalade, nutmeg, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,424 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. 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. Boil the carrots until tender, then pound the red part in a mortar.

Mix the batter

  1. Add the grated bread, melted butter, sugar, marmalade, nutmeg, and beaten eggs. Mix all ingredients well.

Bake

  1. Bake in a dish lined with puff pastry 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.

  1. Carrot + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Bread + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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 the sweet, earthy flavour of the pudding.
Eggs
Set the mixture into a firm, sliceable custard as they cook.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, tender texture to the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown lightly as it bakes.
Grated bread
Absorbs liquid and gives the pudding body and a soft crumb.

The step that matters

Baking until set. Eggs set as they heat, so underbaking leaves the pudding loose and overbaking makes it dry and curdled. Checking for a firm centre before removing it keeps the custard smooth.

Swap the carrot

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

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Carrotthe original

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