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Dessert

Thanksgiving Pudding

A steamed pudding made with bread crumbs, milk, eggs, raisins, currants, dates, citron, suet, nuts, spices, and brandy.

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 ↓

Thanksgiving Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Pour the hot milk over the bread crumbs.

  2. Mix in the ingredients in the order given.

  3. Steam in a buttered mold 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Bread + datestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together100 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Raisin + datestop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together358 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 add structure as they set during steaming.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the pudding together.
Bread crumbs
Soak up the hot milk to add moisture and a tender crumb.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich in texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the spices and dried fruit.
Baking powder
Releases gas that lightens the batter as it heats.

The step that matters

Steam in a buttered mold for six hours. Steaming gently and steadily cooks the eggs and starch through without drying the pudding. Keeping the water at a steady simmer and the mold sealed helps prevent a dense or dry result.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, bread, milk, sugar, egg, raisin, dates. 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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