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Dessert

Carrot Pudding

A steamed pudding made with grated carrots, potato, flour, sugar, raisins, currants, suet, citron, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Carrot Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine grated carrots, grated potato, flour, sugar, chopped raisins, chopped currants, suet, citron, orange peel, lemon peel, baking soda, and salt, and mix well until all ingredients are combined.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a greased pudding mold.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam the pudding for about 5 hours.

  2. Serve with lemon 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

  4. Carrot + orangetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Carrot + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,351 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Grated carrots
Provide moisture and sweetness, giving the pudding its body.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the pudding together as it sets.
Suet
Adds fat, giving a rich, tender texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps keep the pudding moist.
Baking soda
Reacts with the mixture to lift and lighten the pudding.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture.

The step that matters

Steam the pudding for about 5 hours. Steaming gently and steadily cooks the batter through without drying it out. Letting the water boil dry or the steam drop can leave the pudding heavy or undercooked in the center.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Cranberryfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, potato, flour, sugar, raisin, orange, lemon. 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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