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Dessert

Sultana Pudding

A baked pudding made with sultanas, bread, suet, eggs, milk, sugar, and vanilla or lemon essence.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Sultana Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the mold

  1. Butter a pint mold and line it thickly with sultanas.

  2. Fill the mold with slices of fresh bread.

  3. Sprinkle the shredded suet over each slice.

Make and bake the pudding

  1. In a bowl, mix the eggs, milk, sugar, and flavoring.

  2. Pour the custard mixture into the mold until full.

  3. Cover and bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 1 to 1.5 hours.

  4. Serve with 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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  5. Bread + vanillatop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together497 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Sultanas
Provide sweetness and chewy texture, forming the fruited lining of the pudding.
Fresh bread
Forms the body of the pudding and soaks up the custard to set into a soft crumb.
Eggs
Set the custard as they cook, giving the pudding its structure.
Milk
Makes the custard liquid that soaks the bread and keeps the pudding moist.
Suet
Adds richness and fat, contributing to a tender texture as it melts during baking.

The step that matters

Pour the custard until full. Filling the mold completely lets the bread absorb the custard evenly. Gaps left as the pudding sets can leave dry or uneven patches.

“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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