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Dessert

Carrot Cheesecakes

A baked dessert made with carrot pulp, butter, currants, sugar, nutmeg, curd, egg, and lined in puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 Cheesecakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA good oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a good oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Boil the carrot until tender.

  2. Pound the carrot in a mortar and pass the pulp through a fine sieve.

Make and bake

  1. Mix the carrot pulp with oiled butter, currants, sugar, grated nutmeg, fresh curd, and the beaten egg.

  2. Line patty pans with puff pastry and half fill them with the mixture.

  3. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for twenty minutes.

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Currant + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,983 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Carrot
Forms the bulk of the filling and gives it a soft, moist body and natural sweetness.
Egg
Binds the filling and helps it set when baked.
Fresh curd
Adds creamy richness and body typical of a cheesecake filling.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the filling brown lightly in the oven.
Oiled butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture in the filling.

The step that matters

Pass the carrot pulp through a fine sieve. Carrot left lumpy or fibrous gives a grainy filling. Pressing it smooth lets the egg and curd set into an even, creamy texture when baked.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, 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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