Name: Carrot Pudding
Ingredients: ½ pound boiled and sifted carrots; ½ pint bread crumbs; ¼ pound butter; ¼ pound flour; 1 cup dried currants or cherries; ½ pound sugar; 1 teaspoon baking powder; ¼ teaspoon salt

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Carrot Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

Combine the boiled and sifted carrots, bread crumbs, butter, flour, dried currants or cherries, sugar, baking powder, and salt in a mixing bowl and mix until well combined.
Transfer the mixture to a greased pudding mold.

Steam and serve

Steam the pudding for 2 hours.
Serve with your choice of sauce.

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.

Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Carrot + flourtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,029 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Carrot + breadtop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,628 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Carrots: Provide moisture and body, giving the pudding its soft, moist crumb.
Bread crumbs: Absorb liquid and add bulk, helping the pudding hold a tender structure.
Butter: Adds fat for richness and a tender texture.
Flour: Forms the structure that holds the pudding together as it sets.
Baking powder: Releases gas as it heats, giving the pudding lift and a lighter texture.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps keep the pudding moist and tender.

Swap the currant

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

Raisinfits better
Vanillafits better
Figfits better
Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, bread, butter, flour, sugar. 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.