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Rothsay Pudding

A Scottish steamed pudding made with flour, breadcrumbs, suet, sugar, jam, egg, milk, soda, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Rothsay Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the batter

  1. In a basin, mix the flour, bread crumbs, chopped suet, and sugar.

  2. Stir in the raspberry jam.

  3. Beat the egg and milk together, then stir into the mixture.

  4. Mix the carbonate of soda with the vinegar and beat it in.

Boil and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered basin and tie it up carefully.

  2. Boil for two hours.

  3. Turn out onto a hot dish and serve with sifted sugar or custard sauce.

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Milk + raspberrytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,014 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Vinegar + raspberrytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together303 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that holds the pudding together as it steams.
Bread crumbs
Add bulk and absorb the liquid, giving the pudding a soft, moist body.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding rich and tender as it cooks.
Egg
Binds the mixture and helps it set firm when cooked.
Carbonate of soda
Reacts with the vinegar to produce gas that lightens the pudding.
Raspberry jam
Adds sweetness and fruity flavour throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Tying the basin. The basin must be sealed carefully so steam cannot escape and water cannot enter. Steam trapped inside cooks the pudding evenly and keeps it moist during the long boil.

Swap the raspberry

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Raspberrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, bread, sugar, vinegar, milk, 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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