Skip to main content
Dessert

A Hunting Pudding

A pudding made with almonds, suet, currants, raisins, candied fruit, and spices, baked after boiling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

A Hunting Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Zest the lemons and beat the zest finely.

Make the almond mixture

  1. In a bowl, mix the ground almonds, sugar, and lemon zest.

  2. Melt the butter and let it cool, then add to the mixture.

  3. Beat the egg yolks and whites together, then mix with the almond mixture.

  4. Add the orange flower water and mix well.

Make the fruit mixture and cook

  1. In another bowl, combine cream, flour, suet, currants, raisins, powdered sugar, candied citron, candied orange, and grated nutmeg.

  2. Combine both mixtures and stir well.

  3. Pour the mixture into a cloth, tie it securely, and boil for 4 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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Almond + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Almond + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks and whites bind the batter and add richness and structure as they set.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, giving the pudding a tender, rich crumb.
Flour
Provides the starch that gives the pudding its body and holds its shape.
Suet
Adds fat and richness, keeping the pudding moist during long cooking.
Almonds
Contribute fat and nutty flavour and help give the pudding a dense, moist texture.
Currants
Add sweetness, chewy texture and concentrated fruit flavour throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Securing the cloth before boiling. If the cloth is not tied tightly, water can seep in and make the pudding soggy, while the dense batter needs an even, sealed environment to cook through during the long boil.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, almond, sugar, butter, egg, cream, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, almond, sugar, butter, egg, cream, 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.

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipes