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Dessert

Carrot Pudding

A baked carrot dessert made with biscuits, eggs, cream, and flavored with ratafia, orange or rose water, nutmeg, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Carrot Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the carrot

  1. Boil the carrot until tender.

  2. Bruise the carrot in a mortar.

Make the filling

  1. Mix in the biscuit powder or crushed biscuits.

  2. Add the egg yolks and egg whites.

  3. Stir in the cream, ratafia, orange or rose water, nutmeg, and sugar.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a shallow dish lined with pastry for 30-40 minutes.

  2. Dust with sugar before serving.

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. Biscuit + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together368 recipes

    Shared aroma: maltol (caramel, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  5. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Carrot
Provides the bulk and body of the pudding, along with natural sweetness and moisture.
Egg yolks and egg whites
Set the custard as they cook, giving the pudding its structure and a firm, sliceable texture.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, producing a smooth, tender texture once baked.
Biscuit powder
Absorbs liquid and adds body and a toasty, biscuity flavour to the filling.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the custard brown lightly on the surface.

The step that matters

Baking the custard. Eggs set as they heat, so bake gently until the centre just wobbles. Overbaking at high heat makes the custard curdle, weep and turn rubbery.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (biscuit, egg, cream, orange, nutmeg, sugar):

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against biscuit, egg, cream, orange, nutmeg, sugar. 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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