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Dessert

Carrot Pudding

A steamed pudding made with suet, carrots, flour, sugar, raisins, currants, candied peel, ginger, and baking powder.

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 ↓

Carrot Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the batter

  1. Mix together the chopped suet, flour, bread crumbs, and grated carrots, then add the raisins, currants, candied peel, ground ginger, and baking powder.

  2. Beat the egg until light, then mix in the milk.

  3. Combine the egg mixture with the dry ingredients.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a well-buttered pudding basin.

  2. Steam for three hours.

  3. Serve with hard sauce or your choice of sauce.

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 + gingertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

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

  4. Raisin + gingertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,242 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it steams.
All-purpose flour
Provides the starch structure that holds the pudding together.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set firm during steaming.
Baking powder
Releases gas that lightens the batter and helps it rise.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown slightly at the edges.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy moisture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Steaming the pudding. The basin must be well buttered so the pudding releases cleanly. Steam must be kept steady for the full three hours so the batter cooks through and stays moist rather than heavy or dense.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, flour, bread, sugar, raisin, ginger, egg. 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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