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Dessert

Rolled French Pudding

A boiled pudding made from flour, treacle, ginger, and suet, rolled and tied in cloth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Rolled French Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the roll

  1. Make a crust with the flour and suet.

  2. Roll it out to ½ inch thick and spread the treacle evenly, leaving a small margin.

  3. Roll it up and seal the ends securely.

Tie and boil

  1. Tie the pudding in a floured cloth.

  2. Plunge it into boiling water 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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Ginger + buttertop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,152 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 dough and gives the crust its structure as it cooks.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the crust tender and moist.
Treacle
Provides sweetness, moisture and a rich, dark flavour.
Ginger
Adds warm aroma that complements the sweet treacle.

The step that matters

Seal the ends securely. A tight seal keeps the sugary treacle inside the roll and stops boiling water from seeping in, which would make the pudding soggy and leak filling into the pot.

Swap the ginger

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter. 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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