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Dessert

Steamed Carrot Pudding

A steamed pudding made with bread crumbs, grated carrot, potato, suet, molasses, raisins, currants, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Steamed Carrot Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Grate the carrot and potato, then combine with the bread crumbs.

  2. Sift the baking soda, flour, spices, and salt together.

  3. Add the suet, molasses, and dried fruits to the mixture, dredging with a little extra flour.

Steam

  1. Transfer the mixture to a well-buttered mold.

  2. Steam for four 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. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + cinnamontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together981 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses to lift and lighten the dense pudding as it steams.
All-purpose flour
Provides the starch and gluten that give the pudding its structure.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark sweetness and a rich flavor to the pudding.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender as it steams.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and help bind the mixture into a soft, cohesive pudding.
Grated carrot
Contributes moisture, body and natural sweetness to the pudding.

The step that matters

Sift the baking soda, flour, spices, and salt together. Sifting breaks up lumps of baking soda so it disperses evenly. Unevenly distributed soda can leave pockets that are bitter or soapy and uneven rise in the finished pudding.

Swap the currant

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

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

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