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Carrot Pie

A custard pie made with cooked carrots, sugar, eggs, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Carrot Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the carrots

  1. Cook the carrots in slightly salted water until soft.

  2. Mash the carrots very fine or rub through a colander.

Make and bake the pie

  1. In a bowl, combine ½ cup of mashed carrots, ½ cup of sugar, 2 eggs, and 2 cups of milk.

  2. Stir the mixture well and pour it into a shallow pie dish with an under crust only.

  3. Bake 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. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Carrot + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,259 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Carrot + sugartop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,211 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 flavour of the filling, giving body after mashing.
Eggs
Set the custard as they cook, giving the filling structure.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard and adds richness and moisture.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the flavour of the carrots.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Eggs set as their proteins coagulate with heat. Underbaking leaves a runny filling, while overbaking can make the custard curdle or weep, so check for a firm centre rather than relying on time alone.

Swap the carrot

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

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, 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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