Skip to main content
Dessert

Carrot Pudding

A sweet dessert made from boiled carrot, biscuits, eggs, cream, and spices, baked and dusted with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 filling

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

  2. Mix the carrot with biscuit powder or crushed biscuits.

Make the custard

  1. Add egg yolks, egg whites, cream, ratafia, orange or rose water, grated nutmeg, and sugar.

Bake and serve

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

  2. Turn out to serve and dust with sugar.

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, giving it a soft, sweet, moist texture.
Egg yolks
Thicken and enrich the custard so it sets softly when baked.
Egg whites
Add lift and help the custard set with a lighter texture.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, making the custard smooth and moist.
Biscuit powder
Absorbs liquid and adds body, helping the mixture hold its shape.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and contributes to browning on the surface.

The step that matters

Baking the custard. Egg-based custards set as the proteins coagulate; baking too long or too hot can overcook them, making them grainy, watery, or curdled. Watch for a gentle wobble in the centre.

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.

More carrot pudding recipes

Steamed 9 See all 154 →

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipesBaking Powder BiscuitBaking Powder Biscuit119 recipesOrange GelatinOrange Gelatin100 recipes