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Dessert

Troy Pudding

A sweet bread pudding made with soaked bread, molasses, sugar, raisins, currants, spices, eggs, and butter, steamed and served with lemon sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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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 ↓

Troy Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Soak pieces of bread in milk.

  2. Mix the soaked bread into a fine pulp.

  3. Add a little flour to hold the mixture together.

  4. Stir in 1 cup of molasses and 2 cups of sugar.

  5. Add chopped, stoned raisins and currants into the mixture.

  6. Incorporate 12 eggs, 2 nutmegs, 2 cloves, 1 teaspoon of cinnamon, and 2 tablespoons of baking powder.

  7. Mix in a little butter.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into deep, greased pans.

  2. Cover and steam for 3 to 4 hours.

  3. Serve with lemon 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Molasses + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread
Soaked and pulped to form the body of the pudding.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set firm during steaming.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark colour and a deep, rich flavour.
Flour
Helps hold the mixture together so it does not fall apart.
Baking powder
Releases gas that lifts the pudding and makes it lighter.
Milk
Softens the bread so it can be broken down into a pulp.

The step that matters

Steam covered for the full time. Steam gently and steadily heats the pudding so the eggs set and the crumb cooks through without drying. Lifting the lid or letting the water run low lets heat and moisture escape, which can leave the pudding uneven or dense.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Datesfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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