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Dessert

Carrot Pudding

A baked carrot custard with biscuit, eggs, cream, and flavored with ratafia and orange or rose water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 the filling

  1. Boil the carrot until tender, then mash it in a mortar.

  2. Mix in the biscuit powder, egg yolks, egg whites, cream, ratafia, orange or rose water, nutmeg, and sugar.

Bake and serve

  1. Line a shallow dish with pastry.

  2. Pour the mixture into the lined dish.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until set, about 30-40 minutes.

  4. 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, with mashed carrot giving a soft, moist texture.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and help it set into a smooth, sliceable texture when baked.
Egg whites
Add structure and lift, helping the filling set firm while staying light.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the filling a silky, tender mouthfeel.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps tenderise the custard as it bakes.
Biscuit powder
Absorbs liquid and adds body and a light crumbly texture to the filling.

The step that matters

Baking until just set. Egg-based custards turn grainy and weep when overbaked, because the proteins tighten too far and squeeze out liquid. Pull the pudding when the centre barely wobbles; it will finish setting as it cools.

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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