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Dessert

Carrot Jam

A sweet preserve made from young carrots, sugar, lemon, almonds, and optional brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,351 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Carrot Jam

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the carrot pulp

  1. Wash and scrape the carrots, then cut them into round pieces.

  2. Place the carrots in a saucepan and cover with water.

  3. Simmer until soft.

  4. Pass the cooked carrots through a sieve to make a pulp.

Make the jam

  1. Weigh the pulp and add the same weight of powdered sugar to it in a preserving pan.

  2. Boil the mixture for 5 minutes, stirring and skimming constantly.

  3. Remove from heat and mix in the lemon rind, lemon juice, chopped almonds, and brandy if using.

  4. Transfer the jam into pots, cover well, and store in a dry place.

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 + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,351 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Carrot + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together416 recipes

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

  4. Almond + brandytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,969 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  5. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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 jam, and their starch and natural sugars give it body and sweetness.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the jam and, with boiling, helps it thicken and keep.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and supports setting.
Lemon rind
Contributes fragrant citrus oils that add aroma.
Bitter almonds
Add a nutty, bitter aroma that contrasts with the sweetness.

The step that matters

Boiling the pulp with sugar. Stir and skim constantly during the 5-minute boil. Sugar dissolves into the pulp and concentrates it, and the mixture can scorch on the base of the pan if left unattended, which would spoil the flavour.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, lemon, almond, brandy):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, almond, brandy. 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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