Skip to main content
Dessert

Carrot Pudding

A steamed pudding made with grated carrot, potato, bread crumbs, raisins, currants, brown sugar, suet, sour milk, flour, spices, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Raisin and flour 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 ↓

Carrot Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix all ingredients in the order given.

  2. Turn the mixture into well-greased molds.

  3. Cover and steam individual molds for 1½ hours or large molds for 3 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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  4. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

  5. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Grated carrot
Provides moisture and natural sweetness, giving the pudding its body.
Grated potato
Adds moisture and starch that help bind and soften the steamed texture.
Flour
Forms the main structure that holds the pudding together as it steams.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the steamed pudding moist and tender.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk to produce gas, helping the pudding rise.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a molasses note that deepens the flavor.

The step that matters

Steaming the molds. Steam must be kept steady and the molds covered so the pudding cooks through evenly and stays moist. Large molds need the full three hours, since thicker batter takes longer to set in the center. Lifting the lid often lets steam escape and the pudding can turn out dense or uneven.

Swap the currant

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

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

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

Orange Potato BreadOrange Potato Bread80 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesDeep-Fried Potato BallsDeep-Fried Potato Balls119 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipes