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Dessert

Carrot Jam, to Imitate Apricot

A sweet preserve made from carrots, sugar, lemon, almonds, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,351 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Carrot Jam, to Imitate Apricot

Oven, in the book's wordsA gentle oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the carrots

  1. Wash, scrape, and thinly slice the carrots.

  2. Place the carrots in a pot with just enough water to cover them and simmer until soft.

  3. Pass the cooked carrots through a fine sieve.

Make the jam

  1. Add sugar, lemon rind, lemon juice, and chopped almonds to the carrot puree.

  2. Boil the mixture for 10 to 15 minutes.

  3. After cooling, stir in an additional ½ tablespoon of brandy for preservation.

Store

  1. Store in jars covered with parchment and keep in a cool, dry, dark place.

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 + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,351 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Carrot + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together416 recipes

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

  4. Almond + brandytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,969 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  5. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Carrots
Form the bulk of the jam, providing body and natural sweetness once cooked and puréed.
Sugar
Sweetens the jam and, with boiling, thickens it into a spreadable set.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and supports setting.
Brandy
Adds aroma and helps preserve the jam.

The step that matters

Boiling the puréed mixture. Boiling concentrates the sugar and cooked carrot purée so the jam thickens and sets. Boiling too briefly leaves it runny, while overcooking can make it stiff and cause sugar to darken or scorch.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, lemon, almond, brandy):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, almond, brandy. 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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