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Dessert

Carrot Pudding

A steamed pudding made with grated carrots, grated potatoes, suet, brown sugar, flour, baking powder, and raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Carrot Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Combine grated carrots, grated potatoes, chopped suet, brown sugar, flour, baking powder, and raisins in a large bowl, then mix until well combined.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a greased pudding mold.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam for 2 hours until cooked through.

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

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

  3. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Carrot + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,029 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

What each ingredient does

Grated carrots
Provide moisture and sweetness, giving the pudding its body and natural flavor.
Grated potatoes
Add starch and moisture, helping the pudding hold together and stay tender when steamed.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it steams.
All-purpose flour
Provides structure, setting as the starches cook through with the other ingredients.
Baking powder
Releases gas that leavens the batter, giving the pudding a lighter crumb.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a caramel-like depth of flavor.

The step that matters

Steaming for the full time. Steaming gently and for the full time lets the dense mixture cook through evenly. Undercooked centers stay pasty because the starches and flour need sustained heat to set.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Potatothe original

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