Skip to main content
Dessert

Vegetable Pudding

A steamed pudding made with grated carrot, potato, raisins, flour, sugar, spices, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Vegetable Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Combine grated carrot, grated Irish potato, raisins, flour, sugar, baking soda, ground cinnamon, ground allspice, and grated nutmeg in a large bowl.

  2. Add the butter and mix well.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam the mixture for three hours.

  2. Serve with hard sauce or brandy sauce.

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 + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Grated carrot
Adds moisture and sweetness, keeping the pudding tender and moist.
Grated irish potato
Adds moisture and body, helping the pudding stay soft and dense.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together as it steams.
Baking soda
Reacts to lighten the batter so the pudding rises and softens.
Raisins
Add chewy pockets of sweetness and moisture throughout the pudding.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the pudding a tender, moist crumb.

The step that matters

Steam the mixture for three hours. Steaming cooks the batter gently and evenly with moist heat, so it sets through without drying out. Letting the water boil down or the steam drop can leave the pudding dense or uneven.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Potatothe original

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

You might also like

Deep-Fried Potato BallsDeep-Fried Potato Balls119 recipesOrange Potato BreadOrange Potato Bread80 recipesCinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesCinnamon CakeCinnamon Cake42 recipes