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Dessert

Minute Pudding

A quick pudding made with water, milk, raisins, flour or cornstarch, sweetened to taste and served cold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Minute Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Add water and milk to a pot and place on the stove.

  2. Just before boiling, add raisins or currants and salt.

  3. Once boiling, stir in flour or cornstarch mixed with a little milk and add sugar to taste.

  4. Serve cold with sweetened cream or pudding 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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

Milk and flour 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 or cornstarch
Thickens the liquid into a pudding as its starch swells when heated.
Milk
Forms the main liquid and adds richness and a creamy body.
Raisins or currants
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness as they soften in the hot liquid.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the milk and dried fruit.

The step that matters

Stirring in the flour or cornstarch once boiling. Starch thickens only when heated, and it clumps if it hits hot liquid unmixed. Mixing it with a little cold milk first and stirring constantly while the pot is boiling keeps the pudding smooth.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Strawberryfits less well

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