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Dessert

English Carrot Pudding

A baked or boiled pudding made with carrots, bread crumbs, suet, sugar, currants, raisins, eggs, milk, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,377 recipes. Both carry alpha-terpineol, which smells lilac, floral. The science ↓

English Carrot Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the carrots

  1. Boil the carrots until tender, then mash them to a pulp.

Make the batter

  1. Add the remaining ingredients and moisten with enough milk to make a thick batter.

Bake or boil and serve

  1. Turn the mixture into a buttered dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 50 minutes.

  2. Alternatively, tie the mixture in a pudding cloth and boil for 2½ hours.

  3. Turn it out of the dish and dust with powdered sugar 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. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  2. Carrot + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

  4. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 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

Carrots
Mashed carrots provide the moist, dense body that gives the pudding its character.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the milk and give the batter bulk and a soft, crumbly structure.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set as it cooks.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich in texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps browning during baking.

The step that matters

Mashing the carrots to a smooth pulp. Carrots left in lumps will stay firm and uneven in the finished pudding. Thorough mashing after boiling gives an even texture throughout the batter.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, currant, sugar, raisin, egg, milk, nutmeg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, currant, sugar, raisin, egg, milk, nutmeg. 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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