17^th century

Carrot Pudding

Most eighteenth century recipes for this pudding require you to boil the carrots, while Rebecca Price’s seventeenth century recipe, below, uses raw grated carrots. I find the texture of the raw carrot far more agreeable and rustic.

Carrot pudding my Lady Howe’s recipe

Take a twopenny lofe grated; and the same quantity of raw caret grated very small; mix them together; and put to it the yolks of eight eggs, and the whites of 3 beat them well and put them in, then stir in a quarter of a pounde of butter being melted, and a little sack; and grated nutmeg; put in milk enough to make it of a good thickness, about a pinte I believe will be enough; sweeten it pretty sweet to yr tast, mingle all well together; and bake it in a dish, half an hour will do it; when you draw it, poure a little melted butter with Sack in it; one ye top of it.

Rebecca Price, The Compleat Cook, 1681

Henry Howard, in England’s Newest Way in Cookery (1703) also uses boiled carrot but lines his dish with puff pastry and gives the option of using orange flower water instead of sack. Eliza Smith, in 1737 ( The Compleat Housewife), gives a recipe for carrot pudding with puff pastry crust and uses raw carrots; her recipe is very similar to that of Price but uses double the amount of bread and includes cinnamon as well as nutmeg to spice the pudding.

The recipe below uses the filling from Rebecca Price’s recipe in combination with a puff pastry base. I also added a tiny pinch of cinnamon, as in Eliza Smith’s recipe. It is equally as good when baked in a dish without the puff pastry.

Makes a 22 cm (8½ inch) pie

4 egg yolks

2 egg whites

½ teaspoon ground nutmeg

½ teaspoon ground cinnamon

50 g (1¾ oz) raw sugar

170 g (6 oz) carrots, grated

2 tablespoons sherry

150 ml (5 fl oz) thick (double) cream

120 g (4¼ oz/2 cups) fresh breadcrumbs

100 g (3½ oz) butter, melted

½ quantity puff pastry

Preheat the oven to 190°C (375°F).

Beat the eggs in a bowl with the spices and the sugar, then add the grated carrots, the sherry and the cream. Now fold in the breadcrumbs and melted butter and combine well with a wooden spoon to make a thick batter.

Line the pie dish with the puff pastry as instructed, pour in the batter and bake in the bottom part of the oven for 30–40 minutes until the pastry is nice and golden.