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Dessert

Carrot Pudding

A steamed pudding made from boiled carrots, bread crumbs, eggs, butter, and seasoned with pepper and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,555 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Carrot Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the carrots

  1. Boil the carrots until soft.

  2. Chop the carrots small and rub them through a sieve.

Make the mixture

  1. Add the bread crumbs, butter, and eggs to bind the mixture.

  2. Season with pepper and salt to taste.

Steam and serve

  1. Butter a pudding basin and fill it with the mixture.

  2. Steam for two hours, depending on the size.

  3. Turn out the pudding and serve with white sauce poured around it.

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. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Carrot + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Carrots
Form the main body of the pudding, giving it bulk and a soft, sweet flavour.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the pudding body so it holds its shape.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set during steaming to hold the pudding together.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, improving flavour and softness of the pudding.

The step that matters

Rubbing the carrots through a sieve. Pushing the cooked carrots through a sieve breaks them into a fine, smooth texture. Coarse pieces would make the pudding lumpy and uneven when it sets.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, egg, pepper, butter, sauce):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, egg, pepper, butter, sauce. 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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