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Dessert

Carrot Pudding

A steamed pudding made with grated carrots, suet, flour, bread crumbs, sugar, dried fruit, ginger, baking powder, egg, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin 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 bowl, mix the chopped suet, flour, bread crumbs, and grated carrots.

  2. Add the raisins, currants, candied peel, ground ginger, and baking powder.

  3. Beat the egg until light, then add the milk and mix well.

  4. Combine all ingredients and pour into a well-buttered pudding basin.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam for three hours.

  2. Serve with hard sauce or your choice of sauce.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Carrot + gingertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

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

  4. Raisin + gingertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,242 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Suet
Adds richness and a moist, tender texture as it melts during steaming.
Bread crumbs
Absorbs liquid and gives the pudding body and a soft crumb.
Flour
Provides structure that holds the pudding together once cooked.
Egg
Binds the mixture and helps set the pudding as it cooks.
Baking powder
Releases gas that lightens the pudding and helps it rise.
Carrots
Add moisture and body, along with natural sweetness.

The step that matters

Steam for three hours. Steaming gently at a steady simmer cooks the pudding through evenly and keeps it moist. If the water boils dry or drops too low, the pudding can cook unevenly and turn heavy.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, flour, bread, sugar, raisin, ginger, 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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