carrot cake

Should an ‘authentic’ carrot cake have raisins in it?

Michael Bartiromo

Even people who don’t like carrots can find enjoyment in a slice of carrot cake. But if you plop some raisins into the mix, well, that’s enough to drive some people nuts.

That’s exactly the situation that unfolded in response to the “Carrot Bar Cake” that Costco began selling last month. Since its debut in the bakery section, dozens of Costco critics have taken to the internet to voice their disdain over the inclusion of raisins (and to a lesser extent, walnuts). Some people even appeared to take it as a personal affront.

“STOP PUTTING RAISINS IN EVERYTHING,” one Reddit user wrote after learning of the cake’s ingredients.

“Adding raisins to baked goods is proof that villains walk among us,” another alleged.

That’s not to say the reactions were exclusively negative. There were plenty of people defending Costco’s raisin-inclusive cake. Several also claimed that “authentic” or “original” recipes for carrot cakes had always included the chew dried fruits.

“Raisins belong in carrot cake,” one person argued, while another suggested that no “proper” carrot cake could be made without them.

And while it’s true that raisins are indeed a standard ingredient in homemade carrot cakes across the country, it’s unclear when that practice started. It’s also unclear how an “authentic” or “proper” carrot cake would be defined, seeing as its origins could be traced back hundreds of years and across several iterations.

“The belief is that carrot cakes are adapted from carrot puddings which have been around since maybe the late Middle Ages,” Jessica Reed, the author of “The Baker’s Apprentice” and the culinary writer behind The Cake Historian, tells Nexstar.

In the next centuries, recipes for these carrot puddings began to include a number of ingredients often found in today’s carrot cakes (and, yes, sometimes currants or raisins), but they would sometimes be served in a crust, for a dish more akin to a pie, according to the online World Carrot Museum. Recipes for carrot-based desserts described as “cakes” didn’t appear until the early 19th century, the site claims.

It’s also often said that an 1814 cookbook by Antoine Beauvilliers, a French restaurateur and royal chef, as the first to include a more traditional carrot cake recipe (“gateau de carottes”), but it did not include raisins. Reed, speaking with Nexstar, also pointed to a carrot cake that had been served decades prior (“in the late 18th century”) at the Fraunces Tavern in New York City, but that recipe, too, did not include raisins, according to the Fraunces Tavern Museum.

Reed, however, thinks she knows how raisins came to be a (polarizing) fixture in many carrot cake recipes in the years since.

“I think that the addition of raisins maybe [comes] from the evolution of cakes,” Reed says. “Early cakes similar to what we eat today were fruit cakes and cakes where dried fruits were commonly added (such as currants and raisins). It seems to me that the addition of raisins to carrot cake is a natural extension of this.”

Carrots were also offered up as an alternative to sugar during times of war, meaning the idea of a “carrot cake” began gaining popularity at the same time that raisins — another sweet ingredient — were also being used to augment desserts. And it was really only a matter of time before they were often paired together in the same cakes, whether today’s Costco shoppers like it or not.

“Carrot cakes with raisins are the worst carrot cakes,” one Reddit user wrote, echoing the sentiments of numerous like-minded critics.

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