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Dessert

Carrot Pudding

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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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 potato
Adds moisture and body, keeping the pudding tender and dense.
Bread crumbs
Provide bulk and absorb liquid, giving the pudding its structure.
Suet
Adds fat that enriches the texture and keeps the pudding moist during steaming.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk to produce gas, helping the pudding rise.
Sour milk
Its acidity activates the baking soda and adds a slight tang.
Flour
Gives the pudding structure as it sets during steaming.

The step that matters

Steaming time for the molds. Steam is gentle, so the pudding cooks slowly and evenly. Larger molds need about twice the time of individual ones, and undercooking leaves the center wet and heavy while overcooking can dry the crumb.

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.

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