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Dessert

Good Substitute for Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with carrots, potatoes, suet, sugar, raisins, currants, flour, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,536 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Good Substitute for Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Combine grated carrots, grated potatoes, suet, brown sugar, raisins, currants, flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, allspice, cloves, and mace in a large bowl. Mix well until all ingredients are combined.

Steam and serve

  1. Transfer the mixture to a greased pudding mold.

  2. Steam the pudding for 3 hours.

  3. Serve with hard 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.

  1. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  5. Carrot + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,021 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Grated raw carrots
Add moisture and body, giving the pudding its dense, moist texture.
Grated raw potatoes
Add moisture and starch that help bind the pudding as it steams.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding rich and tender as it steams.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and molasses flavor, and moisture to the pudding.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together.
Baking soda
Reacts with the mixture to lighten the pudding and help it rise.

The step that matters

Steam the pudding for 3 hours. Steaming must be gentle and steady so the pudding cooks through evenly and stays moist. Letting the water boil dry or drop too low can leave the pudding unevenly cooked or dense.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, potato, sugar, raisin, flour, cinnamon, allspice):

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, potato, sugar, raisin, flour, cinnamon, allspice. 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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