Skip to main content
Dessert

Carrot Pudding

A baked carrot custard with bread crumbs, eggs, cream, and aromatic flavorings, finished with a sugared top.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. 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

  1. Boil the carrot until tender, then mash it.

  2. Mix the mashed carrot with bread crumbs, egg yolks, egg whites, cream, ratafia, orange-flower water, nutmeg, and loaf sugar.

  3. Line a shallow dish with pastry and pour the mixture into it.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until set.

  2. Once baked, turn it out and sprinkle sugar over the top.

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 + orangetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together737 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Orange + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,746 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Carrot
Forms the bulk of the pudding and gives it a soft, moist body.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and help it set firm when baked.
Egg whites
Add structure and lightness, helping the pudding hold its shape as it sets.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, giving a smoother, softer texture.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and help give the mixture body so it holds together.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps brown the surface lightly.

The step that matters

Baking until set. Eggs set as their proteins coagulate with heat. Underbaking leaves the pudding runny, while overbaking makes it dry and curdled, so check for a firm centre rather than relying only on time.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, egg, cream, orange, nutmeg, sugar):

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Spinachfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, egg, cream, orange, nutmeg, 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.

More carrot pudding recipes

Steamed 9 See all 154 →

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipesOrange GelatinOrange Gelatin100 recipes