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Dessert

Vegetable Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with grated carrots, potatoes, apples, suet, raisins, flour, sugar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Vegetable Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Sift the flour, baking soda, and salt together.

  2. Mix in the raisins, grated carrots, raw potatoes, apples, and suet.

  3. Add spices to the mixture.

  4. Steam the mixture for 3 hours or more.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

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

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 pudding together as it cooks.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and gives it a tender crumb.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Grated raw potatoes
Starch adds body and helps the pudding hold moisture as it steams.
Grated carrots
Add moisture and gentle sweetness to the batter.

The step that matters

Steam for the full 3 hours or more. Steaming needs steady, gentle heat for the whole time. If the water boils dry, the pudding stays underdone or dry. The long, moist heat gradually cooks the starch and softens the suet so the pudding sets evenly.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, apple, raisin, sugar, flour, cinnamon, clove. 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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