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Dessert

Well Pudding

A suet pudding made with currants, butter, brown sugar, and crust, boiled for two hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,856 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Well Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the crust

  1. Make a suet crust with plenty of currants.

  2. Roll into 2 round pieces, one smaller than the other.

Assemble

  1. Take ½ pound butter and 3 cups brown sugar.

  2. Lay the small piece of crust on top and gather into a ball.

  3. Place the large piece over the join and fasten tightly to keep the syrup in.

Boil

  1. Tie in a cloth and boil for 2 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 + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. 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

Suet
Adds fat that makes the crust rich and tender as it cooks.
Currants
Add fruit, sweetness and moisture throughout the crust.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a soft, buttery texture inside.
Brown sugar
Sweetens the filling and melts into a syrup that moistens the pudding.

The step that matters

Fastening the join tightly. The sealed crust holds the butter and sugar syrup inside while the pudding boils. If the join opens, the syrup leaks out and the filling can turn dry or patchy.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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