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Dessert

Carrot Pudding

A baked pudding made from grated carrots, bread crumbs, milk, sugar, spices, eggs, and lime, topped with almonds and citron.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,437 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. 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 carrots in a mortar until smooth.

  2. Soak the bread crumbs in boiling milk until softened.

Make and bake

  1. In a bowl, combine the soaked bread, sugar, orange-flower water, lime zest, lime juice, cinnamon, and beaten eggs. Mix well and pour into a greased baking dish lined with pastry.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until set and lightly browned.

Finish

  1. Dust with sugar and decorate with almonds and citron 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. Orange + cinnamontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Orange + limetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together937 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Carrot + orangetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Lime + cinnamontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together470 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Carrot + cinnamontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together981 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Carrots
Pounded to a smooth purée, they add moisture, body and gentle sweetness to the pudding.
Bread crumbs
Soaked in milk, they swell and give the pudding its tender, bound body.
Eggs
Beaten eggs set when baked, giving the pudding its structure.
Milk
Softens the bread crumbs and adds moisture to the custard-like mixture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown lightly in the oven.

The step that matters

Bake until set and lightly browned. Egg proteins set as they heat, so underbaking leaves the pudding loose and wet in the centre, while overbaking makes it dry and rubbery.

Swap the lime

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, bread, milk, sugar, orange, cinnamon, egg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Limethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, bread, milk, sugar, orange, cinnamon, 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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