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Dessert

Carrot-pie

A sweet pie made from boiled carrot puree, eggs, sugar, milk, butter, and rose water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Carrot-pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the carrots

  1. Wash, scrape, and rinse the carrots. Slice them thin.

  2. Boil the carrots in minimal water for 2.5 to 3 hours until soft.

  3. Sift the boiled carrots through a tin sieve to yield about 2 cups.

Make the custard

  1. In a bowl, combine the carrot puree with the beaten eggs, sugar, salt, butter, rose water, and milk.

Bake

  1. Line a deep pie plate with crust and fill it with the mixture.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until the crust is light brown.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Carrot + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,259 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Carrots
Cooked and sifted to form the smooth, thick body of the filling.
Eggs
Set when baked, giving the pie its firm, sliceable custard structure.
Milk
Adds moisture and creaminess, and helps the filling set into a custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and aids browning at the edges of the crust.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the custard a smoother, softer texture.

The step that matters

Sifting the boiled carrots to a smooth puree. Any fibrous pieces left in the carrot puree will make the filling grainy rather than silky. Sifting removes these fibers so the custard sets evenly.

Swap the carrot

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

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

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