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Dessert

Carrot and Treacle Pudding

A steamed or baked pudding made with carrot, flour, treacle, milk, baking powder, fat, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Carrot and Treacle 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.

Make the batter

  1. Thoroughly mix the all-purpose flour, maize flour, and baking powder with the melted fat.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix the treacle, milk, and beaten egg together.

  3. Stir the wet mixture into the dry ingredients until well combined.

Steam and bake

  1. Steam for 1½ hours.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + carrottop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,029 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure of the pudding as its gluten sets during cooking.
Carrot
Adds moisture and body, keeping the grated pudding tender and damp.
Treacle
Adds sweetness, deep flavour and colour, and extra moisture to the batter.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the wet batter, helping the pudding rise and become light.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps it set into a firm, cohesive crumb.
Fat
Coats the flour and shortens gluten, giving a more tender, rich texture.

The step that matters

Stir the wet mixture into the dry ingredients until well combined. Stirring only until combined keeps gluten development limited, so the pudding stays tender rather than tough and dense. Overmixing builds gluten strands that toughen the crumb.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, milk, butter, egg):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, milk, butter, 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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