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Dessert

Paradise Pudding

A boiled pudding made with bread crumbs, suet, currants, raisins, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and raisin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,180 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, creamy. The science ↓

Paradise Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a large bowl, combine the bread crumbs, chopped suet, currants, stoned raisins, and sugar, then mix well.

  2. Transfer the mixture into a buttered mold.

  3. Cover the mold and boil for 3 hours.

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

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

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

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

  3. Bread + raisintop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,111 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Bread + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,398 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes

Currant and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,256 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

Bread crumbs
Provides the bulk and soft body that holds the pudding together.
Suet
Adds richness and fat that keeps the pudding moist as it steams.
Currants
Adds concentrated sweetness and chewy fruit texture throughout.
Stoned raisins
Adds sweetness and chewy fruit texture throughout the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding taste rich and balanced.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, raisin, 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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