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Dessert

Thanksgiving Pudding

A steamed pudding made with bread crumbs, suet, fruit, spices, and alcohol.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,230 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Thanksgiving Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Pour the hot milk over the bread crumbs and let it soak.

  2. In a large bowl, mix the soaked bread crumbs with the remaining ingredients in the order listed.

Steam

  1. Transfer the mixture to a buttered mold.

  2. Steam the pudding for six 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. Walnut + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Lemon + walnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during steaming.
Suet
Adds richness and moisture, giving the pudding a tender texture.
Flour
Provides structure so the pudding holds its shape after steaming.
Bread crumbs
Soak up the hot milk, adding moisture and a soft, light body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the pudding a darker, caramelised colour.

The step that matters

Steaming the pudding. Steaming must be gentle and steady for the full six hours, with the mold kept covered and water topped up. Uneven heat or boiling water can make the pudding heavy or cause the mold to leak.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, bread, lemon, milk, sugar, egg, nutmeg):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Milletfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, bread, lemon, milk, sugar, egg, nutmeg. 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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