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Dessert

Carrot Pudding

A steamed pudding made with sugar, suet, raisins, currants, grated carrot, flour, baking soda, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

Carrot Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a large bowl, combine sugar, suet, raisins, currants, grated carrot, and flour.

  2. Dissolve baking soda in a little milk and add to the mixture. Mix well until combined.

Cook

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

  2. Boil for three 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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that holds the dense pudding together as it cooks.
Baking soda
Reacts with the moisture and acid in the mixture to lighten its texture as it cooks.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich during long steaming.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the pudding a soft, tender crumb.
Grated carrot
Adds moisture and natural sweetness, keeping the pudding tender.

The step that matters

Boil for three hours. Long, gentle boiling cooks the flour and fats through and sets the dense batter. Keeping the water boiling and topped up matters, since uneven heat can leave the center underdone or the pudding soggy.

Swap the carrot

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, raisin, currant, flour, milk. 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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