Carrot Pudding

This was a fun one. I started out browsing Cooking in the Archives looking for a vegetable side dish. I ended up settling on a carrot pudding that they did a write-up for a while back. But the original recipe was damaged and there were a few words at the edge of the page that had become illegible. Here is a transcription:

To make Carrot Pudding
Take Six Carrots not to large Boyle them well & as many pip[pins]
w^th y^e juce of one Lemon & four Sugar Rouls Beat them very
well in a Marble Mortor Mix with these a pint of Cream
& three Eggs Sweeten it to your tast Bake it in a Dish w^th pa[xxx]
& put in Cittern & Candid Oringe

The recipe looks pretty straight-forward overall, but not knowing what that missing word was was driving me nuts! The ladies over at Cooking in the Archives transcribed it as "pu[xxx]", but after staring at it for a while I started wondering if the second letter might actually be an "a" and the missing word might be "paste" -- as in "pastry".

I ended up calling in TM's help on this one. After staring at it for a while and comparing it to similar recipes, the best guesses we could come up with were either some sort of crust or some sort of fat. (We looked at another early modern carrot pudding recipe that called for a large quantity of melted butter to be added to the custard just before baking.)

I think this pudding would work nicely as a sort of tart or pie. It's basically a carrot custard and we put pumpkin custard into pie shells all the time! I think it would make a lovely pie. That said, I ended up making it without the crust this time. Mostly because six carrots, six apples, three eggs, and nearly half a litre of cream makes A LOT of custard and I didn't want to deal with either a stupidly huge pie or lots of smaller ones. So I just did one big, crustless pudding this time around. I think it would be fun to experiment with combining this custard with different pastries though. My go-to would probably be shortcrust, but I think a nice flaky/rough puff could also be nice.

I really enjoyed the citrus flavours with the carrots in this. Honestly, it was really good just as it was. But it could also be interesting to try adding different spices. Cinnamon and orange came up in other early modern recipes. And, although I didn't see any that called for ginger, I think that would also be really nice.

TM also pointed out that it's possible that the "sugar rouls" in this recipe are meant to be fresh breadcrumbs or something similar rather than sugarloaves as I'd originally assumed. And, based on what seems to have been the typical size of a sugarloaf -- 3-5 lbs. -- I think TM probably had it right. Four 3-lb. sugarloaves would be an insane amount of sugar. I ended up using 200g of sugar for my pudding. And, based on similar recipes (and my tastebuds), 100-225g seems to be about right for this amount of carrots. I think it'd be interesting to try it with breadcrumbs at some point, but I was really feeling the custard-y approach today, so I left out the starch this go 'round.

Carrot Pudding (Custard-y)

Adapted from Ms. Codex 631 [Recipe Book] by Judeth Bedingfield

Ingredients

• 6 carrots
• 6 apples
• juice of 1 lemon
• 200g sugar
• 2 c. table (18%) cream¹
• 3-4 eggs²
• 40-50g candied citron and/or orange peel and/or mixed peel

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 180°C (350°F) and grease a casserole dish.
2. Peel and chop the carrots and apples and place them in a pot with enough water to cover them.
3. Bring to a boil and cook until very tender.
4. Drain and purée the carrots and apples.³
5. Blend in the lemon juice, sugar, cream, and eggs.
6. Pour the custard into the prepared dish and sprinkle in the citron/orange.
7. Bake at 180°C (350°F) for ~2 hours or until just set.

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¹ I ended up using whipping cream (35%) for my pudding, but I think table cream probably would've been more appropriate. ^Back
2 The original recipe only called for three eggs, but that didn't seem like very much egg to set that amount of custard. I had an extra egg white left over from making a pie, so I tossed that in. I'm not confident that it would've set up without the extra white. Some of the other recipes called for even more egg. I think I'd lean toward using four eggs in the future. ^Back
3 I decided to try mashing my carrots and apples this time, just to see how the pudding would come out. It was delicious, but I think it would've been even better with puréed custard for a smoother texture. ^Back