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Dessert

Vegetable Pudding

A sweet pudding made with suet, sugar, grated apples, carrots, potatoes, flour, raisins, currants, bread crumbs, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Vegetable Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. In a large bowl, combine suet, sugar, grated apples, grated carrots, grated potatoes, flour, raisins, currants, bread crumbs, and salt. Mix well until all ingredients are combined.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a pudding mold or heatproof dish.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil in a pot of water for three hours.

  2. Serve warm.

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

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

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

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

  4. Apple + curranttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  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

Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the grated ingredients together as the pudding sets.
Bread crumbs
Absorbs moisture and helps give the pudding a light, binding body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the tartness of the apples and dried fruit.
Grated apples
Contribute moisture and a slightly tart flavour that brightens the dense pudding.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Boil in a pot of water for three hours. The pudding must be fully enclosed in its mold or dish and kept submerged so it cooks gently and evenly. If the water boils dry or the mold is not sealed, the pudding can dry out or cook unevenly.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, apple, carrot, potato, flour, raisin, bread. 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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