Name: Welsh Carrot Plum Pudding
Ingredients: ½ pound raisins; ½ pound currants; ½ pound suet, chopped fine; 1 ounce lemon peel, grated; 1 nutmeg, grated; 2 large carrots; 2 tablespoons flour

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 ↓

Welsh Carrot Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Boil the carrots until soft, then mash them into a pulp.
In a large bowl, mix the raisins, currants, suet, lemon peel, nutmeg, and flour.
Add the pulped carrots to the mixture and combine well.

Boil

Transfer the mixture to a pudding cloth or mold and tie securely.
Boil the pudding in water for 2 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.

Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,075 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,318 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,377 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).
Nutmeg + carrottop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,424 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,623 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Carrots: Mashed carrots add moisture and natural sweetness to the dense pudding.
Suet: Solid fat that melts during boiling, giving the pudding a rich, tender texture.
Flour: Absorbs liquid and helps bind the fruit and carrot into a cohesive pudding.
Raisins: Provide sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

Swap the currant

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

Limefits better
Orangefits better
Figfits better
Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, lemon, nutmeg, carrot, 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.