Name: Vegetable Plum Pudding
Ingredients: 1 pound mashed potatoes; ½ pound carrots, boiled and mashed; 1 pound all-purpose flour; 1 pound currants, stoned; 1 pound raisins, stoned; ¾ pound sugar; 8 ounces suet, chopped; 1 nutmeg, grated; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt

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

Mix the mashed potatoes, mashed carrots, flour, currants, raisins, sugar, suet, nutmeg, and salt together until well combined.
Place the mixture into a well-floured cloth and tie it securely.

Boil

Boil the pudding in water for 4 hours.
To improve texture, consider adding 2 eggs before boiling.

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.

Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,075 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Potato + carrottop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,107 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,377 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).
Carrot + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,424 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
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

All-purpose flour: Forms the structure of the pudding and, dusted on the cloth, keeps it from sticking.
Mashed potatoes: Adds moisture and body to the mixture.
Carrots: Add moisture and natural sweetness to the mixture.
Suet: Adds fat that makes the pudding rich and tender as it cooks.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps balance the savoury vegetables.
Raisins: Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness.

The step that matters

Tie the cloth securely. The floured cloth forms a release layer so the pudding does not stick, and a tight seal stops water soaking in during the long boil, which would make the pudding heavy and waterlogged.

Swap the currant

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

Figfits better
Vanillafits better
Orangefits better
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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Carrot Soup134 recipes

Potato Rolls78 recipes

Potato Chips53 recipes

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Vegetable Plum Pudding