Skip to main content
Dessert

Carrot-potato Pudding

A sweet pudding made with flour, suet, sugar, mashed carrots, mashed potatoes, raisins, and breadcrumbs, boiled for three hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

Prepare

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

  2. Add spice, flavoring, and peel if desired.

  3. Gradually add water until the mixture is not too stiff or too moist.

Cook

  1. Rub a basin with dripping and pour the mixture into it.

  2. Cover 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
Forms the bulk and structure of the pudding.
Suet
Adds richness and moisture, keeping the pudding tender as it cooks.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the pudding its browned flavor.
Carrots
Add moisture, body and natural sweetness to the pudding.
Potatoes
Add moisture and body, helping the pudding hold a soft, dense texture.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and help give the pudding a firm, cohesive texture.

The step that matters

Gradually add water. Too much water makes the mixture slack and it may not hold its shape, while too little leaves it stiff and dry. Adding water slowly lets you judge the consistency before it sets during boiling.

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.

You might also like

Orange Potato BreadOrange Potato Bread80 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesDeep-Fried Potato BallsDeep-Fried Potato Balls119 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipes