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Dessert

Carrot Pudding

A baked pudding made with boiled carrots, raisins, currants, suet, flour, sugar, spices, nutmeg, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour 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

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. In a large bowl, mix the mashed carrots, raisins, currants, chopped suet, flour, brown sugar, mixed spices, grated nutmeg, and egg until well combined.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a pudding mold or dish.

Cook and bake

  1. Boil the pudding for 4 hours.

  2. After boiling, bake the pudding in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for 20 minutes.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  3. Carrot + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Carrots
Provide the bulk and moisture that make up most of the pudding.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding rich and tender as it cooks.
Flour
Gives the mixture structure so it holds together when set.
Egg
Binds the ingredients together and helps set the pudding.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture.

The step that matters

Boil the pudding for 4 hours. Long, steady steam or simmering heat cooks the starches and sets the dense mixture through without drying it out. Letting the water boil dry or the pudding cook unevenly can leave it soggy or underdone in the centre.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, raisin, flour, sugar, nutmeg, egg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, raisin, flour, sugar, nutmeg, egg. 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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