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Carrot Pudding

A steamed pudding made with raisins, currants, grated potatoes, carrots, suet, flour, brown sugar, baking soda, and salt.

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

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine raisins, currants, grated potatoes, grated carrots, chopped suet, flour, brown sugar, baking soda, and salt, then mix well until all ingredients are combined.

  2. Transfer the mixture into a pudding mold with a tight-fitting lid.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam or boil the pudding for 3 hours.

  2. Serve with any sauce suitable for plum pudding.

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. Potato + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the dense pudding together.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sugars and fruit to lighten the batter slightly.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich during long steaming.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and molasses flavor while helping keep the pudding moist.
Grated potatoes
Add moisture and body to the batter, giving a dense, tender crumb.
Grated carrots
Add moisture, natural sweetness and a soft texture to the pudding.

The step that matters

Keeping the mold sealed while steaming. A tight-fitting lid keeps steam inside so the pudding cooks gently and stays moist. If steam escapes, the pudding can dry out and the water level may need topping up during the long cook.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, potato, carrot, 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.

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