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Currant Pudding

A steamed currant pudding with a sweet vanilla sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Currant Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Mix currants, sugar, butter, sweet milk, baking powder, and salt in a bowl.

  2. Add enough flour to create a stiff batter.

  3. Steam the mixture for 30 minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. Beat the egg until light for the sauce.

  2. Add sugar, sweet milk, and butter to the egg.

  3. Heat the mixture on the stove until hot.

  4. Remove from heat.

  5. Flavor with vanilla extract.

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Currants
Provide fruit pieces and tart flavor throughout the pudding.
Flour
Forms the structure of the stiff batter that holds the pudding together.
Baking powder
Releases gas as it heats, helping the pudding rise and become light.
Egg
Adds structure and richness to the sauce and helps it thicken when heated.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture in the pudding and sauce.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and the sauce.

The step that matters

Remove from heat. Heating the egg mixture until hot thickens it, but overheating can scramble the egg and make the sauce grainy. Take it off the stove once it is hot.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, milk, flour, egg, sauce, vanilla):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, milk, flour, egg, sauce, vanilla. 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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