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Dessert

Carrot Pudding

A baked pudding made from boiled carrots, bread or biscuit, butter, sugar, marmalade or orange peel, nutmeg, 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 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

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. Pound the red part of the boiled carrots in a mortar.

  2. Add the grated bread or pounded biscuit, melted butter, sugar, marmalade or orange peel, and nutmeg, then mix all ingredients well.

Bake

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

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

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

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

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

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 moisture, and body once pounded into the custard base.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set it into a firm, sliceable pudding when baked.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving a softer, more tender texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps browning on the surface during baking.
Bread or biscuit
Soaks up liquid and adds structure, helping the pudding hold its shape.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Eggs set as they heat, so underbaking leaves the pudding loose and wet in the middle, while overbaking can make it dry and rubbery. Check that the centre is just firm.

Swap the carrot

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, sugar, orange, 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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