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Dessert

Vegetable Pudding

A pudding made from grated carrots, mashed potatoes, flour, suet, sugar, candied lemon peel, and currants, boiled slowly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and potato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,107 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Vegetable Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a large bowl, combine grated carrots, mashed potatoes, flour, suet, sugar, candied lemon peel, and currants. Mix well until all ingredients are thoroughly combined.

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

  3. Boil slowly for 4 hours, ensuring the water level remains consistent.

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

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

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

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

  3. Potato + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,029 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

What each ingredient does

Carrots
Add moisture and natural sweetness to the pudding's body.
Mashed potatoes
Add moisture and body, keeping the pudding tender.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together as it cooks.
Suet
Adds fat that enriches the texture and keeps the pudding moist.

The step that matters

Boil slowly for 4 hours, ensuring the water level remains consistent.. Steady, gentle heat cooks the pudding through evenly. If the water level drops, the pudding is exposed to air and can cook unevenly or dry out at the top.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, potato, flour, sugar, 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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