Name: Carrot Pudding
Ingredients: ½ lb carrots; 3 oz bread crumbs; 2 oz butter; ⅓ cup cream; 2 eggs; ⅓ cup sherry; 1 oz castor sugar; 1 tablespoon orange flower water; Puff paste for lining the dish

Why it works: Carrot and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Carrot Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Wash and scrape the carrots clean.
Grate the red part of the carrots into a bowl.
Set a wire sieve over a plate.
Rub the bread through the sieve to obtain about 3 oz of crumbs.
Add the bread crumbs and 1 oz of sugar to the bowl with the carrots.
Melt 2 oz of butter in a saucepan over low heat.
Remove the saucepan from heat and let it cool slightly.
Stir in ⅓ cup of sherry, ⅓ cup of cream, and 1 tablespoon of orange flower water.
Add the yolks of 2 eggs to the mixture.
Whip the egg whites to stiff peaks and gently fold them into the mixture.
Combine the mixture with the carrot and bread crumbs, mixing well.
Line a 1-pint pie dish with puff paste.
Pour the pudding mixture into the lined pie dish.

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.

Carrot + orangetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together737 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Sherry + orangetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together823 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

Swap the carrot

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

Capsicumfits better
Asparagusfits better
Sweet potatofits better
Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, cream, egg, sherry, sugar, orange. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.