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Vegetable Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with mashed potatoes, carrots, flour, currants, raisins, sugar, suet, nutmeg, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Vegetable Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Mix and wrap

  1. Mix together the mashed potatoes, mashed carrots, flour, currants, raisins, sugar, suet, grated nutmeg, and salt until well combined.

  2. Place the mixture into a well-floured cloth and tie it up tightly.

Boil and serve

  1. Boil the pudding in water for 4 hours.

  2. Serve cold or warm, and consider adding sweetmeats, brandy, or spices for extra flavor.

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

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

  4. Carrot + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Potato + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Provides starch that sets and helps hold the pudding together as it cooks.
Suet
Adds fat that melts into the mixture, keeping the pudding moist and rich.
Mashed potatoes
Add starchy body and moisture, helping the pudding stay tender and cohesive.
Carrots
Add moisture, mild sweetness, and bulk to the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the warm spice of the nutmeg.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated fruity sweetness.

The step that matters

Wrapping the pudding in the cloth. The cloth must be well floured and tied tightly so water cannot soak into the pudding during boiling. A loose or unfloured cloth lets water in and can make the pudding soggy or cause it to stick and break apart.

Swap the currant

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

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

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

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