Skip to main content
Dessert

Vegetable Pudding

A steamed pudding made with grated apple, carrots, potato, raisins, suet, flour, lemon peel, baking soda, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Vegetable Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine the grated apple, carrots, potato, chopped raisins, finely chopped suet, flour, grated lemon peel, baking soda, and salt.

  2. Dissolve the baking soda in a little boiling water and add to the mixture. Mix well until combined.

Steam

  1. Transfer the mixture to a greased pudding mold.

  2. Steam for 1½ 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. Carrot + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,351 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Potato + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Apple + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,920 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

Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the grated vegetables and fruit together.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender as it steams.
Baking soda
Reacts with the moist mixture to lighten the pudding as it steams.
Grated potato
Adds moisture and body to the batter.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture.

The step that matters

Dissolving the baking soda. Baking soda needs moisture and an alkaline reaction to release gas, so it should be fully dissolved in hot water and mixed evenly through the batter. Uneven mixing can leave dense pockets or a bitter taste.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Applethe original

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

You might also like

Apple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesDeep-Fried Potato BallsDeep-Fried Potato Balls119 recipes