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Preserve

Carrot Plum Pudding

A sweet pudding made from boiled carrots, flour, raisins, citron, suet, and spices, cooked slowly in a double boiler.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Carrot Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil 1 quart of carrots until tender, then mash them.

  2. In a large bowl, combine the mashed carrots, flour, raisins, citron, sugar, salt, suet, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves, and mix all ingredients well.

Cook and serve

  1. Cook the mixture in a double boiler for 3 hours.

  2. This pudding can be stored for weeks and warmed in a double boiler before serving.

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 + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Carrots
Provide the bulk and moisture that give the pudding its soft, dense body.
Flour
Adds starch that helps bind the mixture and gives it structure as it cooks.
Suet
Adds fat that enriches the texture and keeps the pudding moist.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps browning and flavour develop during long cooking.

The step that matters

Cooking in a double boiler for 3 hours. Gentle, indirect heat cooks the pudding slowly and evenly, so it sets through without scorching on the bottom. Keeping the water at a steady simmer and checking it stays topped up prevents the pudding from drying out or catching during the long cook.

Swap the carrot

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, raisin, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, 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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