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Dessert

Diplomatic Pudding

A rich steamed pudding of cream, bread crumbs, suet, eggs, dried fruit and rum, served with an orange sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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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 ↓

Diplomatic Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In an enamelled saucepan, combine cream, loaf sugar, and lemon rind over gentle heat until nearly boiling.

  2. Stir in bread crumbs, flour, beef suet, and beef marrow; cook for 10 minutes.

  3. Transfer mixture to a basin and let it cool.

Mix and fill the mold

  1. Mix Muscadel raisins, candied orange peel, currants, sultana raisins, and beaten eggs in a bowl.

  2. Add grated nutmeg, rum, and orange water; beat the mixture for 15 minutes.

  3. Butter a mold and decorate with Muscadel raisins; pour in the pudding mixture and tie it securely.

  4. Boil rapidly for 2 hours.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For the sauce, dissolve loaf sugar in the strained juice of sweet oranges and boil until thickened.

  2. Stir in rum and serve the sauce with the pudding.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Bread + beeftop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Raisin + orangetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,684 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Form the body of the pudding and absorb the cream and eggs.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set firm when boiled.
Beef suet
Adds richness and a moist, tender texture as it melts.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness to the base mixture.
Flour
Helps thicken the base and give the pudding structure.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps make the orange sauce.

The step that matters

Boil rapidly for 2 hours. The pudding must stay at a steady, rapid boil for the full time so the eggs and starch set and the pudding cooks through. A weak boil can leave it heavy or undercooked.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Orangethe original
  4. Coconutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar, lemon, bread, flour, beef, raisin. 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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