Name: Carrot Pudding
Ingredients: 1 cup sugar; 1 cup suet; 1 cup raisins; 1 cup currants; 1 cup grated potatoes; 1 cup grated carrots; 1½ cups flour; 1 teaspoon baking powder; ¼ teaspoon salt

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 ↓

Carrot Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

Combine sugar, suet, raisins, currants, grated potatoes, grated carrots, flour, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl and mix until well combined.
Transfer the mixture to a pudding mold.

Steam

Steam for 3 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.

Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,075 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Potato + carrottop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,107 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together6,180 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).
Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,481 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Carrot + flourtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,029 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

Suet: Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it steams.
Flour: Forms the structure that holds the pudding together.
Baking powder: Releases gas that lifts the batter so the pudding is lighter.
Grated carrots: Adds moisture and natural sweetness to the pudding.
Grated potatoes: Adds moisture and body to the pudding.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown slightly at the surface.

Swap the currant

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

Figfits better
Vanillafits better
Orangefits better
Currantthe original

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