Carrot Pudding from the 1730s

Several years back, Alyssa Connell wrote at Cooking in the Archives about a handwritten cookbook in the collection of the University of Pennsylvania:

This two-volume recipe book is dated 1730 (vol. 1) and 1744 (vol. 2) and belonged to Judeth Bedingfield, though it contains the handwriting of multiple persons. The carrot pudding recipe comes from the first volume, which includes not only other recipes for cooking – pickled pigeon, for instance, “quaking pudding,” quince cream, and many more – but also for making various kinds of wine and cordials and for household remedies for ailments like colic.

One of the recipes Bedingfield collected in that manuscript was:

To make a Carrot Pudding Mrs Bransby Kent[xxx]

Take six Carrots not to large boyl them well & as many pip[pins] with the 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 in a dish with pu[xxx] & put in Cittern & Candid Oringe

Connell and her co-blogger, Marissa Nicosia, adapted that recipe into a modern one they shared on the blog.

This past weekend, I tried making that carrot pudding. With a small household, I halved the ingredients down to one egg and one Granny Smith apple. I had the modern advantages of a food processor to puree and blend, silicone muffin molds, and a thermostat-regulated oven (which needed more baking time than the adapted recipe called for, probably because I chose not to use a pie pan). With the extra baking time, the puddings set to my liking, and after cooling I turned them out onto plates.

The result was sweet, tasty, and soft, like a carrot flan. I’m definitely keeping the recipe in the pile.

There are many other historical recipes for carrot puddings compiled here at the Carrot Museum site.