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Dessert

Rothsay Pudding

A boiled pudding made with suet, bread crumbs, flour, sugar, salt, baking soda, egg, milk, preserved ginger or raisins, currants or jam, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Rothsay Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the suet, bread crumbs, flour, sugar, salt, and baking soda.

  2. Beat the egg and mix it with the milk.

  3. Add the egg and milk mixture to the dry ingredients along with the preserved ginger, raisins, currants, or jam.

  4. Finally, stir in the vinegar.

Boil and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered mold and boil for 2 hours.

  2. Serve with sweet 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. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + gingertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Suet
Adds richness and a tender, moist crumb as it melts during cooking.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together.
Baking soda
Reacts with the vinegar and gives the pudding lift.
Egg
Binds the mixture and helps it set firm.
Milk
Moistens the dry ingredients into a batter.
Vinegar
Reacts with the baking soda to produce gas that aerates the pudding.

The step that matters

Stir in the vinegar last. Vinegar reacts with baking soda right away, releasing gas. Adding it at the end and moving the batter straight into the mold keeps that gas trapped so the pudding rises rather than going flat.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

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