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Dessert

Weymouth Pudding

A steamed pudding made from stale bread crumbs, suet, figs, raisins, sugar, lemon, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Fig and raisin work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 737 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Weymouth Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the stale bread crumbs in hot milk.

Mix and steam

  1. In a large bowl, combine the soaked bread crumbs, chopped suet, figs, raisins, sugar, salt, eggs, lemon juice, and lemon zest, then beat all the ingredients well together.

  2. Pour the mixture into a well-buttered mold.

  3. Steam for 3 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. Fig + raisintop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together737 recipes

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

  2. Milk + figtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,026 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Bread + figtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together374 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Fig + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together763 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread crumbs
Soak up the hot milk to form the pudding's body and soft, moist crumb.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it steams.
Eggs
Bind the mixture together and help it set firm during steaming.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the fruit and lemon.
Figs
Provide chewy texture and natural sweetness throughout the pudding.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Steam for 3 hours. Steaming gently at a steady simmer cooks the eggs and starch slowly so the pudding sets evenly without drying out. Letting the water boil dry or stopping early can leave the centre wet or the texture uneven.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Datesfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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