Skip to main content
Dessert

Carrot Pudding

A steamed pudding made with grated carrots, potatoes, raisins, spices, and a batter of flour, sugar, butter, and cocoa.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Carrot Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the grated carrots and potatoes to the mixture.

  3. In a separate bowl, mix the flour with the baking soda, then add to the mixture.

  4. Stir in the spices and raisins until well combined.

Steam and dry

  1. Fill pound baking powder cans 3/4 full with the batter.

  2. Place the cans in a kettle of boiling water and steam for about 1 hour.

  3. After steaming, set the cans in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) to dry a little.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Raw carrots
Adds moisture and natural sweetness, keeping the pudding soft and moist.
Raw potato
Adds moisture and body to the batter, helping it stay tender after steaming.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that sets as the batter cooks.
Sugar
Creams with the butter for lightness and adds sweetness.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the batter and carries flavor.
Baking soda
Acts as a leavening agent to give the pudding lift.

The step that matters

Steaming the cans in boiling water. The water must stay at a steady boil so the batter cooks through gently with moist heat. If the water drops too low, the pudding may cook unevenly or turn dense.

Swap the cocoa

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Chickpeafits better
  4. Cocoathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, potato, sugar, flour, raisin, cinnamon, nutmeg. 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 recipesCinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesCinnamon CakeCinnamon Cake42 recipes