Skip to main content
Dessert

Steamed Carrot Pudding

A steamed pudding made with grated carrot, potato, bread crumbs, flour, molasses, raisins, currants, suet, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Steamed Carrot Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Grate the carrot and potato.

  2. In a large bowl, combine the grated carrot, grated potato, and bread crumbs.

Mix the batter

  1. Sift the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg together, then add to the mixture.

  2. Stir in the suet, molasses, and fruits, and dredge with a little extra flour.

Steam

  1. Pour the mixture into a well-buttered mold.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

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

  4. Carrot + cinnamontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together981 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the pudding body so it holds together.
All-purpose flour
Provides structure as the starch sets during steaming.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, and moisture.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding rich and tender.
Baking soda
Reacts to lighten the batter and help it rise.
Grated carrot
Adds moisture and natural sweetness to the pudding.

The step that matters

Steam for four hours. Steaming gently and steadily cooks the starches and sets the pudding through without drying it out. Letting the water boil dry or lowering the heat for long stretches can leave the pudding dense or undercooked in the center.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, carrot, potato, flour, molasses, raisin, cinnamon. 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

Orange Potato BreadOrange Potato Bread80 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesDeep-Fried Potato BallsDeep-Fried Potato Balls119 recipesMolasses CookiesMolasses Cookies96 recipes