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Dessert

Carrot Pudding

A steamed pudding made from carrots, breadcrumbs, butter, sugar, eggs, cinnamon, cherries, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 981 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Carrot Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the carrots

  1. Wash and scrub the carrots without scraping them.

  2. Boil the carrots in slightly salted water until tender, then rub through a fine sieve.

Make the pudding

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together, then add the egg yolks and beat well.

  2. Mix in the breadcrumbs, cinnamon, cherries, and carrot pulp.

  3. Whip the egg whites to stiff peaks and gently fold them into the mixture.

  4. Pour the mixture into a well-buttered mold and steam for 2 to 2.5 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve with lemon sauce or sherry sauce.

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

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Butter + cinnamontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Young carrots
Provide the main bulk and moisture, with their pulp giving the pudding its body.
Fresh breadcrumbs
Absorb liquid and give the pudding a soft, tender structure.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, contributing to a tender crumb and rich flavour.
Eggs
Bind the mixture, and the whipped whites lighten its texture as it sets.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whipped whites hold air that lightens the pudding. Overmixing or stirring vigorously deflates them, leaving a dense result after steaming.

Swap the carrot

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, cinnamon. 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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