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Dessert

Carrot Pudding

A baked carrot custard made with carrots, breadcrumbs, butter, sugar, nutmeg, salt, and eggs.

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

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.

Make the mixture

  1. Boil and mash the carrots until smooth.

  2. Add the bread crumbs, melted butter, sugar, nutmeg, salt, and beaten eggs, then mix all ingredients thoroughly.

Bake

  1. Bake in a dish lined with puff pastry at 350°F (175°C) 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. Carrot + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Bread + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Carrots
Provide the bulk, moisture, and natural sweetness of the pudding.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and help give the mixture body.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set into a firm custard when baked.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown during baking.

The step that matters

Bake until set. The eggs must coagulate fully to firm the pudding. Pulling it from the oven too early leaves a loose, wet center, while the puff pastry base needs the heat to cook through.

Swap the carrot

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, 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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