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Dessert

Carrot Pu Ng

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin 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 Pu Ng

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Combine the flour, sugar, suet, raisins, currants, grated potatoes, grated carrots, and baking soda in a large bowl and mix well until all ingredients are combined.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a pudding mold or a heatproof dish.

Steam

  1. Steam or boil for 3 hours until cooked through.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Potato + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

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

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

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

  5. Flour + carrottop 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

Flour
Provides the starch and gluten structure that holds the pudding together as it cooks.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender while it steams.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown slightly at the edges.
Grated potatoes
Add moisture and starch, giving the pudding a soft, dense body.
Grated carrots
Add moisture and natural sweetness, giving the pudding a soft, dense body.

The step that matters

Steam or boil for the full 3 hours. Long, gentle moist heat is needed to cook the grated potatoes and carrots through and set the starch. Stopping early leaves the centre dense, dough-like, or undercooked.

Swap the currant

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

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

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