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Dessert

Fine Carrot Pudding

A baked carrot custard with bread, eggs, butter, wine, and puff pastry crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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 ↓

Fine 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.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Grate the carrot and crumble the white bread.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the grated carrot, crumbled bread, egg yolks, egg whites, and milk.

  2. In a separate bowl, combine melted butter, white wine, orange-flower water, nutmeg, and sugar.

  3. Stir the butter mixture into the carrot mixture until well combined. If too thick, add more milk.

Bake and serve

  1. Line a baking dish with puff pastry and pour the mixture into it.

  2. Bake for 1 hour.

  3. Serve with grated sugar on top.

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

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

  2. Carrot + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  4. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Orange + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,746 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

White bread
Absorbs the liquids and gives the pudding its body as it sets.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and help it set into a soft, tender structure.
Egg whites
Add lift and help bind the pudding while it bakes.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the mixture so the bread can soften through.
Melted butter
Adds richness and a tender texture to the baked pudding.
Raw carrot
Provides the main flavour and moist, tender body of the pudding.

The step that matters

Stir in the milk only if the mixture is too thick. The bread soaks up liquid as it rests, so the batter should be loose enough to moisten fully. Too much milk, however, makes the pudding watery and slow to set, so adjust gradually.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, egg, milk, butter, white wine, orange, nutmeg):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, egg, milk, butter, white wine, orange, nutmeg. 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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