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Dessert

Carrot-potato Pudding

A sweet pudding made from flour, suet, sugar, mashed carrots, mashed potatoes, raisins, bread crumbs, and optional spices, boiled for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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-potato Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, mix together the flour, suet, sugar, mashed carrots, mashed potatoes, raisins, and bread crumbs.

  2. Add spice, flavoring, and peel if desired. Gradually add water until the mixture is not too stiff and not too moist.

Steam and serve

  1. Rub a basin with dripping to prevent sticking.

  2. Pour the mixture into the basin and boil 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. 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. Flour + carrottop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,029 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 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

Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the pudding together.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich in texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the pudding its browned, rich flavor.
Carrots
Add moisture and body, along with natural sweetness.
Potatoes
Add moisture and body, helping the pudding stay soft and tender.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and help give the pudding a firmer, more cohesive texture.

The step that matters

Adding the water. Water is added gradually because too much makes the batter loose and heavy, while too little leaves it stiff and dry. Adjusting slowly lets you reach the right consistency before steaming.

Swap the potato

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

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

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