Skip to main content
Dessert

Carrot Pudding

A baked dessert made from carrots, butter, sugar, eggs, nutmeg, brandy, cream, and pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,424 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Carrot Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the filling

  1. Boil the carrots until soft, then let them cool.

  2. In a mortar, beat the cooled carrots with the butter until well mixed.

  3. Add the sugar, eggs, nutmeg, brandy, and cream; mix well.

Bake

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

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for 1 hour.

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 + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Nutmeg + creamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Nutmeg + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,311 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Carrots
Provide the main body and sweetness of the pudding once cooked and mashed.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that gives the filling a smooth, tender texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown slightly during baking.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set into a firm, sliceable custard-like texture.

The step that matters

Cooling the carrots before mixing. Adding hot carrots to the butter can melt it and split the mixture, so cooling them first keeps the filling smooth and well emulsified.

Swap the carrot

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

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, nutmeg, brandy, cream. 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

Brandy PeachesBrandy Peaches68 recipesBrandy CreamBrandy Cream21 recipesBrandy PuddingBrandy Pudding13 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipes