Skip to main content
Main

A Kentish Well Pudding

A Kentish Well Pudding is a meat and currant pudding encased in pastry, boiled for two and a half hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Eliza Acton · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

A Kentish Well Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the paste

  1. Make a firm smooth paste with cold water, one pound flour, six ounces finely minced beef suet, three quarters pound currants, and a small pinch salt, thoroughly mixed together.

  2. Form the mixture into a ball and place six ounces of good butter inside, enclosing it securely in about a third of the paste rolled to a half inch thickness.

  3. Roll out the remainder of the paste and place the portion containing the butter in the centre of it, with the part where the edge was drawn together turned downwards.

  4. Gather the outer crust round it, and after moistened the edge, close it with great care.

Boil and serve

  1. Tie the pudding tightly in a well-floured cloth.

  2. Boil the pudding for two hours and a half.

  3. Dish the pudding carefully to avoid breaking, cutting a small bit directly from the top as in a meat pudding.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

619Calories
14 gProtein
13 gFat
111 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 4 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Grape1/2 cup (76g)62
Salt1 tsp (6g)0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Eliza Acton. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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 their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  3. Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Flour + beeftop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,077 recipes

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the paste's structure, holding the suet, butter and currants together while boiling.
Beef suet
Adds richness and a tender, moist texture to the paste.
Butter
Enclosed in the paste, it melts during boiling to add moisture and richness.
Currants
Provide sweetness and fruit flavour throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Close the paste securely around the butter. If the edges are not moistened and sealed well, the paste can split and the butter can leak out during the long boil, and the pudding may burst.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, beef, butter):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, beef, butter. 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

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipesBeef BrothBeef Broth67 recipes