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Dessert

Carrot Custard

A custard made with boiled carrots, egg, sugar, flour, milk, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Carrot Custard

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. Mash the boiled carrots in a bowl.

  2. Add the egg, sugar, flour, salt, milk, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

  3. Mix until smooth and well combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a baking dish.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until set.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard as they cook, giving it a firm, sliceable structure.
Flour
Thickens the mixture and helps keep the custard smooth rather than watery.
Carrots
Provide the main body, moisture and subtle sweetness of the custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and contributes to browning at the surface in the oven.
Milk
Supplies liquid that cooks with the egg to form a tender custard.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Egg proteins coagulate as the custard heats, so pulling it too early leaves it runny, while overbaking can make it curdled, grainy and weepy.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, flour, milk, cinnamon, nutmeg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, flour, milk, cinnamon, nutmeg. 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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