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Preserve

Cup Pudding

A steamed pudding made with flour, suet, currants, raisins, milk, nutmeg, baking soda, and brown sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Cup Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make and cook

  1. Mix all ingredients together very well.

  2. Pour the mixture into a buttered basin.

  3. Steam for two hours.

Serve

  1. Serve with brandy or another 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 + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

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

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

  5. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

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 that holds the pudding together as it steams.
Suet
Adds richness and a tender, moist crumb through its fat.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sugar and milk to lighten the pudding as it cooks.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a deeper, molasses-like flavour.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and helps form a soft, moist batter.

The step that matters

Mix all ingredients together very well.. Thorough mixing spreads the baking soda evenly so the pudding rises uniformly rather than in pockets, and distributes the suet and fruit through the batter.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, raisin, milk, nutmeg, 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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