Skip to main content
Dessert

Carrot Pudding

A steamed pudding of grated carrot and potato with raisins, spices and a sauce finished with lemon, sugar and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 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 ↓

Carrot Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. In a large bowl, combine grated carrots, grated potato, raisins, sugar, melted butter, flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, and baking soda. Mix well and transfer to a greased steaming dish.

  2. Steam for 3 hours.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, melt butter in a saucepan, then whisk in cornstarch and sugar.

  2. Add lemon juice and rind, egg, and boiling water, stirring until creamy.

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

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

  5. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Grated carrots
Provide moisture and body, and bulk out the pudding's texture.
Grated potato
Adds starch and moisture, helping the pudding hold together and stay tender.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the steamed pudding together.
Baking soda
Reacts with the mixture to help it rise and lighten during steaming.
Cornstarch
Thickens the sauce so it becomes creamy when stirred over heat.
Egg
Enriches the sauce and helps it set to a creamy consistency.

The step that matters

Stirring the sauce until creamy. Cornstarch thickens only when heated and stirred, so the sauce must be stirred steadily as it cooks to avoid lumps and a thin, uneven texture.

Swap the potato

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

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

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

More carrot pudding recipes

Steamed 9 See all 154 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesDeep-Fried Potato BallsDeep-Fried Potato Balls119 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes