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Vegetable Pudding

A boiled vegetable mixture of cabbage and other root vegetables, sweetened and seasoned, served with optional sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cabbage and carrot are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,505 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Vegetable Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Boil the cabbage or greens until tender.

  2. Boil your choice of the second vegetable until tender, then chop it.

  3. Mix the chopped vegetable with the cabbage.

Season and shape

  1. Season with sugar, herbs, and spices.

  2. Pour into a pan or tureen, ensuring the mixture is firm enough to hold its shape.

Serve

  1. Serve with white or brown sauce if desired.

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. Cabbage + carrottop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Carrot + saucetop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,509 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Carrot + sugartop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,211 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Cabbage + saucetop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together437 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Cabbage or greens
Forms the bulk of the pudding and gives it its main body and flavour.
Boiled carrots, turnips, parsnips, beet roots, artichokes, potatoes, leeks, celery, or onions
Adds body and starch so the mixture can hold together when shaped.

The step that matters

Pour into a pan or tureen while the mixture is firm enough to hold its shape. Cooked vegetables hold water and only bind loosely. If they are too wet or not sufficiently cooked and drained, the pudding will slump instead of keeping its shape when turned out or served.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, sugar, sauce):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, sugar, sauce. 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.

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