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Dessert

Vegetable Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with mashed potatoes, carrots, flour, currants, raisins, suet, sugar, 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

Make the mixture

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

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

Boil

  1. Boil the pudding in water for 4 hours.

Optional additions

  1. To improve texture, consider adding a couple of eggs, sweetmeats, brandy, or spices if desired.

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 the starch and structure that set the pudding as it cooks.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender as it steams.
Mashed potatoes
Add body and moisture to the dense mixture.
Sugar
Provides sweetness that balances the dried fruit and spice.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and a chewy texture.

The step that matters

Tie the cloth securely. A loose or poorly floured cloth lets water seep in, making the pudding soggy and heavy. A tight tie keeps the mixture compact and moist during the long boil.

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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