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Baking

Carrot Pies

A baked pie with a carrot puree filling sweetened with sugar and spices, mixed with eggs and milk.

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

Carrot Pies

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 filling

  1. Boil the carrots until very tender, then skin and sift them.

  2. In a bowl, beat five eggs and mix with 1 quart of milk.

  3. Sweeten the mixture with sugar and add spices: cinnamon, allspice, or nutmeg.

  4. Boil the milk first, then let it cool before using.

Assemble and bake

  1. Combine the carrot puree with the egg and milk mixture.

  2. Pour into a pie crust and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 15 to 20 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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Carrot + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,021 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Carrot + cinnamontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together981 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Carrots
Form the puree that gives the filling its body and moisture.
Eggs
Set the custard as it bakes, giving the pie a firm, sliceable texture.
Milk
Provides the liquid that combines with the eggs to form the custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the earthy flavour of the carrots.
Cinnamon
Adds warm aroma to the filling.

The step that matters

Cool the boiled milk before mixing. Eggs are proteins that scramble and curdle when exposed to very hot liquid. Letting the boiled milk cool before combining keeps the custard smooth and evenly set.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, egg, milk):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, egg, milk. 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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