Skip to main content
Dessert

Vegetable Pudding

A steamed pudding made from carrots, potatoes, suet, flour, sugar, candied peel, and currants.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and potato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,107 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Vegetable Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a large bowl, mix grated carrots, mashed potatoes, chopped suet, flour, moist sugar, candied peel, and currants.

  2. Add a little milk or water to form a paste.

Steam and serve

  1. Transfer the mixture into a basin or mold and tie a cloth over it.

  2. Place it in a saucepan with boiling water and steam for about 2 hours.

  3. Serve hot.

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

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

  2. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  3. Carrot + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,029 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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
Provides the starch and structure that hold the pudding together.
Mashed potatoes
Adds body and moisture, helping the mixture bind into a paste.
Carrots
Contribute moisture and a little natural sweetness to the pudding.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and a soft, moist texture.

The step that matters

Forming the paste. Too little liquid leaves the mixture dry and crumbly, while too much makes it heavy and sodden. Add milk or water gradually until the mixture just holds together before steaming.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, potato, flour, sugar, milk. 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 recipesRed Currant JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipesCurrant Ice CreamCurrant Ice Cream32 recipes