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Dessert

English Carrot Pudding

A steamed or boiled pudding made with grated carrots, suet, raisins, currants, sugar, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

English Carrot Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the pudding

  1. Mix the grated carrots, chopped suet, raisins, currants, sugar, flour, and spices thoroughly.

  2. Boil the mixture for 4 hours.

Dry and finish

  1. After boiling, dry the pudding in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for 20 minutes.

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

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

  3. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Carrot + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,029 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

What each ingredient does

Grated carrots
Add bulk, moisture and natural sweetness to the pudding.
Chopped suet
Melts during cooking to add fat, richness and a tender crumb.
Flour
Starch thickens with heat and helps hold the mixture together.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown in the oven.
Raisins
Add sweetness and a chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Currants
Add sweetness and small chewy bursts of fruit flavour.

The step that matters

Drying the pudding in the hot oven after boiling. Boiling leaves the pudding wet and soft. A short spell in a hot oven drives off surface moisture so the outside firms and browns instead of staying soggy.

Swap the currant

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

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

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