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Dessert

Carrot Pie

A baked pie made with carrot pulp, milk, eggs, butter, lemon, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Carrot Pie

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 the carrot pulp

  1. Scrape the skin off the carrots and boil them until soft.

  2. Strain the boiled carrots through a sieve to obtain the pulp.

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, combine the carrot pulp, milk, beaten eggs, melted butter, lemon juice, and grated lemon rind.

  2. Sweeten the mixture to your taste.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into deep pie plates and bake at 350°F (175°C) without an upper crust.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  3. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard structure as they cook, holding the filling together when baked.
Carrot pulp
Provides the main body, color, and natural sweetness of the filling.
Milk
Supplies liquid and creaminess, giving the filling a soft, smooth texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, contributing to a tender texture and flavor.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Bake without an upper crust at the stated temperature. Eggs in a custard-style filling set through gentle heat; baking too hot or too long can curdle or weep the filling, leaving it watery or grainy.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, egg, butter, lemon, sugar):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, butter, lemon, sugar. 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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