Skip to main content
Dessert

Carrot Pudding

A steamed pudding made with flour, baking soda, salt, currants, sugar, grated potatoes, suet, and grated carrots.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Potato and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,107 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Carrot Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix and sift the flour, baking soda, and salt.

Make the pudding

  1. Add the suet and currants, and mix well.

  2. Stir in the grated potatoes and carrots until well blended.

  3. Steam the mixture as you would a fruit pudding.

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. Potato + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

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

  2. Flour + carrottop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,029 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + potatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,077 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together as it steams.
Baking soda
Reacts to lighten the batter so the pudding rises and stays tender.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the pudding a soft, moist crumb.
Grated potatoes
Add moisture and body to the batter, keeping the pudding tender.
Grated carrots
Add moisture, subtle sweetness, and bulk to the pudding.

The step that matters

Steam the mixture as you would a fruit pudding. Steaming gently and steadily cooks the pudding through without drying it out. Letting the water boil dry or the steam drop can leave the pudding dense or undercooked in the centre.

Swap the currant

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

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

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

More carrot pudding recipes

Steamed 9 See all 154 →

You might also like

Deep-Fried Potato BallsDeep-Fried Potato Balls119 recipesOrange Potato BreadOrange Potato Bread80 recipesRed Currant JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipesCurrant Ice CreamCurrant Ice Cream32 recipes