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Dessert

Carrot Pudding

A steamed pudding made with carrots, potatoes, walnuts, raisins, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Dissolve the baking soda in a little warm water.

  2. Stir in the carrot syrup.

  3. Add the remaining ingredients in the order listed.

Steam the pudding

  1. Turn the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

  2. Cover tightly and steam steadily for three hours.

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

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

  3. Walnut + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Karo syrup
Adds sweetness and moisture, keeping the pudding soft and dark.
Grated carrots
Add moisture and a tender, dense texture to the pudding.
Grated potato
Adds moisture and body, helping the pudding hold together as it steams.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps give the pudding its set structure.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the pudding together.
Baking powder
Releases gas as it heats, lifting the batter so the pudding is light.

The step that matters

Cover tightly and steam steadily for three hours. Steam trapped by a tight cover keeps the pudding moist and cooking evenly. If the water stops boiling or steam escapes, the pudding dries out and cooks unevenly, so the water level and heat must be kept up for the full time.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Potatothe original

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