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Dessert

Hard Times Pudding

A steamed pudding made from stale bread, butter, spices, currants, raisins, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Hard Times Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soften the stale bread with hot water and measure after softening.

  2. Mix the flour and currants together before combining with the bread.

  3. Grease a fluted cake dish and flour it well.

Cook

  1. Pour the pudding mixture into the prepared dish.

  2. Steam for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Walnut + allspicetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together553 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Walnut + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread
Softened bread forms the body of the pudding and absorbs moisture as it steams.
Currants
Dried fruit adds sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Raisins
Dried fruit adds sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the pudding a softer, more tender crumb.

The step that matters

Soften the bread fully before combining. Bread that is only partly softened stays dry and lumpy, so it will not bind evenly with the other ingredients or absorb the liquid properly during steaming.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, walnut, clove, allspice, raisin, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, walnut, clove, allspice, raisin, 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.

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