Name: Carrot Pudding
Ingredients: 1 ½ pounds raw carrots, grated; 3 cups bread crumbs or Naples biscuits; ½ pint (2 cups) milk or cream; 8 eggs, beaten; ¼ to ½ pound fresh butter; Loaf sugar, to taste; Nutmeg, to taste; ½ pint (2 cups) white wine; ⅓ cup ratafia or brandy

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

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

Grate the red part of the raw carrots.
Mix the grated carrots with double the weight of bread crumbs or Naples biscuits.

Make the mixture

In a large bowl, combine the carrot mixture with milk or cream, beaten eggs, and fresh butter.
Add loaf sugar, nutmeg, white wine, and ratafia or brandy to the mixture.

Bake

Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake 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.

Carrot + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,424 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,083 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,466 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Carrots: Provide the bulk and moist, sweet body of the pudding.
Bread crumbs or naples biscuits: Absorb liquid and give the pudding its soft, sliceable structure.
Eggs: Bind the mixture and set it into a custard-like texture as it bakes.
Milk or cream: Adds moisture and richness, softening the crumbs and enriching the custard.
Butter: Adds fat for richness and a tender texture.
White wine: Adds moisture and acidity that brightens the sweetness.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, milk, egg, butter, sugar, nutmeg, white wine):

Capsicumfits better
Shallotfits better
Potatofits better
Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, egg, butter, sugar, nutmeg, white wine. 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.