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Dessert

Economy Pudding

A pudding made from soaked bread or cake crumbs, raisins, spices, and optional butter and sugar, finished with a sweet sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Economy Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pudding

  1. Soak the bread, cake, or cookie crumbs in water or milk.

  2. Add the raisins, nutmeg, cloves, baking soda, and enough flour to stiffen the mixture.

  3. If using all bread, add the butter and sugar.

  4. If using half bread, add the butter and sugar accordingly.

  5. If using all cake, omit the butter and sugar.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam for three hours.

  2. Serve with your preferred sauce.

  3. For a nice sauce, cream together the sugar, butter, and egg.

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. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  4. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  5. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bread, cake, or cookie crumbs
Form the bulk of the pudding and soak up the liquid to set its body.
Raisins
Add pockets of sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Flour
Stiffens the mixture so it holds its shape after steaming.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving a softer, more tender crumb.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps soften the texture of the pudding.
Egg
Enriches the sauce and helps it thicken and bind when creamed.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits about as well
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Allspicefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, raisin, nutmeg, flour, butter, sugar. 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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