Skip to main content
Dessert

Carrot Jam

A preserve made from boiled carrots, sugar, lemon juice, tartaric acid, and orange wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Carrot Jam

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the carrots

  1. Clean the carrots and boil them until soft.

  2. Mash the carrots very fine and rub through a wire sieve.

Make the jam

  1. Boil the pulp again with the sugar for 20 minutes.

  2. Add the lemon juice while boiling.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in the tartaric acid and orange wine.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Carrot + orangetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Carrot + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,351 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Orange + winetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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 smooth body of the jam once pulped.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness and, as it concentrates, helps the jam thicken and keep.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens flavour and supports setting.
Tartaric acid
Adds sharp acidity that balances the sweetness and supports setting.
Orange wine
Adds aroma and flavour to the finished jam.

The step that matters

Boil the pulp with the sugar for 20 minutes. Boiling drives off water and concentrates the sugar and fruit solids, which lets the jam thicken and set. Too little boiling leaves it runny and spoilable, while too long can darken and over-thicken it. Timing this stage matters for both texture and keeping quality.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, lemon, orange, wine):

  1. Arrowrootfits about as well
  2. Carrotthe original
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Sweet potatofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, orange, wine. 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.

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipes