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Dessert

Carrot Pie

A sweet pie made with eggs, flour, sugar, carrots, milk, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon 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 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

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, mix the egg yolks, flour, sugar, and grated carrots.

  2. Add the milk and flavor with nutmeg, cloves, and cinnamon.

  3. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  4. Gently fold the beaten egg whites into the carrot mixture.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a pie crust and bake 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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Add richness and help the filling set as it bakes.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they add lightness and airy structure to the filling.
Flour
Thickens the filling and gives it body as it cooks.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps balance the spices.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that sets into a custard-like texture.

The step that matters

Fold the beaten egg whites into the carrot mixture. Folding gently keeps the air whipped into the egg whites. Stirring vigorously would deflate them, leaving a denser, less airy pie.

Swap the carrot

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

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

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