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Vegetable Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with mashed potatoes, grated carrots, flour, brown sugar, dried fruit, eggs, candied peel, lemon, milk, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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

Prepare

  1. Prepare the raisins, currants, and candied peel as usual.

  2. Mix all the dry ingredients thoroughly.

Mix and cook

  1. Beat the eggs and curdle the milk with the lemon juice, then stir them in to moisten the mixture.

  2. Grease a basin or mold and pour in the mixture.

  3. Steam or boil for 4 to 6 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. Potato + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,351 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  5. Potato + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Mashed potatoes
Adds body and moisture, keeping the pudding soft and tender after steaming.
Grated carrots
Adds moisture and natural sweetness, giving the pudding a dense, moist crumb.
Flour
Provides structure, helping the mixture hold together as it cooks.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set as it cooks, giving it structure.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a molasses note that deepens the flavour.

The step that matters

Steam or boil for 4 to 6 hours. Steady, gentle heat sets the eggs and starch slowly through the dense mixture. If the water boils dry or drops to a low simmer, the pudding can turn heavy or unevenly cooked, so the cook should keep the water level topped up.

Swap the currant

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

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

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