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Dessert

Steamed Carrot Pudding

A steamed pudding made with grated carrot, potato, bread crumbs, flour, molasses, suet, currants, raisins, spices, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Steamed Carrot Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Grate the carrot and potato.

  2. Combine the grated carrot, grated potato, and bread crumbs in a bowl.

  3. Sift the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg together.

Make and steam the pudding

  1. Add the suet, molasses, and currants to the mixture.

  2. Dredge the mixture with a little extra flour.

  3. Transfer the mixture to a well-buttered mold.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + cinnamontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together981 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

Molasses
Adds dark sweetness and moisture, and contributes to the pudding's deep colour and flavour.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together as it steams.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses' acidity to help the pudding rise and lighten.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender during long steaming.
Grated potato
Adds moisture and starch that help bind the pudding and keep it tender.

The step that matters

Steam for four hours. Steaming must be gentle and steady for the full time so the starches set and the pudding cooks through evenly. Letting the water boil dry or drop too low leaves the pudding dense or undercooked in the centre.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, carrot, potato, flour, molasses, cinnamon, raisin. 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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