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Ourrant Pudding

A pudding made with flour, baking powder, suet, brown sugar, currants, and milk, boiled for at least four hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Ourrant Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix the flour, baking powder, suet, brown sugar, and currants together in a bowl.

  2. Add enough milk to moisten the dry ingredients.

Boil

  1. Tie the mixture tightly in a well-scalded cloth.

  2. Boil in plenty of fast-boiling water for at least 4 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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Currant + milktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Flour + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,077 recipes

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Flour
Forms the bulk of the pudding and sets into its structure as it cooks.
Baking powder
Releases gas that helps the pudding rise and become light.
Suet
Adds richness and fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a deeper, molasses-like flavour.
Currants
Provide chewy pockets of sweet, fruity flavour throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Tying the cloth. The cloth must be tied tightly so the pudding holds its shape and water cannot seep in during the long boil. Scalding the cloth first helps prevent sticking and keeps it clean.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, milk. 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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