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Dessert

Carrot Pudding

A steamed pudding made with grated carrots, bread crumbs, suet, currants, raisins, flour, milk, salt, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour 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 ↓

Carrot Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Mix and shape

  1. Combine all ingredients in a large bowl and mix well until fully combined.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a pudding cloth or mold.

Boil

  1. Boil for 3 to 4 hours, the longer the better.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Grated carrots
Adds moisture and natural sweetness to the pudding.
Bread crumbs
Soak up liquid and give the pudding a soft, tender body.
Minced suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Flour
Provides structure that sets the mixture into a firm pudding.
Milk
Supplies liquid that hydrates the flour and crumbs.
Chopped raisins
Add chewiness and concentrated sweetness throughout.

The step that matters

Boil for the full 3 to 4 hours. Steady, prolonged heat lets the flour and bread crumbs set into a firm, moist pudding. Stopping early leaves the centre wet and dense.

Swap the currant

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

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

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

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