Name: Baked Raisin Pudding
Ingredients: 1 lb flour; 1 teacup bread crumbs; ½ lb sugar; ¼ lb stoned raisins; ⅛ lb shredded fat; 2 teaspoons baking powder; 1 teaspoon salt; 2 cups water

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 ↓

Baked Raisin Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
Grease a pie dish or tin.

Mix and bake

In a bowl, mix the flour, bread crumbs, sugar, raisins, shredded fat, baking powder, and salt together well.
Gradually add the water to the dry mixture, stirring until combined.
Pour the mixture into the prepared dish and bake for 30 minutes.
Reduce the oven temperature to 300°F (150°C) and bake for an additional hour.

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.

Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,075 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,481 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Bread + raisintop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,111 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Flour + breadtop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together10,383 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and bread barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,383 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 main structure of the pudding as it bakes.
Baking powder: Releases gas during baking, helping the pudding rise and turn light.
Shredded fat: Adds richness and tenderness by coating flour particles and shortening the crumb.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown at the edges as it bakes.
Raisins: Add concentrated sweetness and chewy pockets of moisture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Reduce the oven temperature after 30 minutes. The pudding sets and browns quickly at the first high heat, so dropping to a lower temperature lets the centre cook through without the outside burning. Skipping the reduction risks a dark crust with an undercooked middle.

“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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Baked Raisin Pudding