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Dessert

Carrot Pudding

A steamed pudding made with butter, sugar, eggs, currants, raisins, flour, spices, grated carrots, grated potatoes, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Carrot Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the eggs and beat each egg in thoroughly.

  3. Mix in the currants, raisins, flour, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, grated carrots, and grated potatoes.

  4. Dissolve the baking soda in hot water, then add it to the potato mixture.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered mold.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and a tender crumb by carrying fat through the batter.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during steaming.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the pudding as it cooks.
Baking soda
Reacts with the batter to create gas that lightens the pudding.
Grated carrots
Add moisture and body, keeping the pudding soft and dense.
Grated potatoes
Add moisture and body, helping the pudding stay tender.

The step that matters

Dissolve the baking soda in hot water, then add it to the potato mixture. Baking soda needs a liquid to dissolve and react. Dissolving it fully before mixing spreads it evenly, so the pudding rises uniformly rather than developing pockets of soda or a bitter taste.

Swap the currant

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

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

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