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Dessert

Peach Pudding

A baked or boiled pudding made with dried peaches, bread crumbs, milk, suet, raisins, cinnamon, brandy, eggs, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Hodgson, Mary, fl. 1855 · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 20 ingredients
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Why it works: Peach and milk match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and 780 recipes mention both. Both carry phellandrene, which smells minty. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk, wheat (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash one quart of dried peaches well in four waters.

  2. Pour three pints of boiling milk over one quart of bread crumbs, made fine.

Make and cook the pudding

  1. Add five large tablespoonsful of flour, three spoonfuls of cinnamon, one wine glass full of brandy, half a pound of suet, two tablespoonsful of brown sugar, and eight or nine eggs beaten separately.

  2. Boil for three hours.

Serve

  1. Serve with wine sauce.

By Hodgson, Mary, fl. 1855. 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. See the original page.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Peach + milktop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together780 recipes

    Shared aroma: phellandrene (minty).

  2. Raisin + cinnamontop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Wine + brandytop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together2,423 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  4. Milk + breadtop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together11,363 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Raisin + flourtop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together9,071 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 set the pudding as it cooks, giving it body.
Bread crumbs
Soak up the hot milk to form the soft body of the pudding.
Suet
Adds richness and fat, keeping the pudding moist and tender as it boils.
Flour
Thickens the mixture so the pudding holds its shape when boiled.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a deeper, molasses-like flavor.

The step that matters

Boil for three hours. The pudding must cook long and at a steady simmer so the eggs and flour fully set and the batter firms into a sliceable body rather than a loose, wet mass.

Flavor stand-ins for the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peach, milk, bread, flour, cinnamon, wine, brandy):

  1. Vanillabetter flavor fit
  2. Applebetter flavor fit
  3. Figbetter flavor fit
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peach, milk, bread, flour, cinnamon, wine, brandy. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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