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Dessert

Sweetmeats Pudding

A steamed pudding made with pie crust, jam or stewed fruit, served with a butter, sugar, and nutmeg sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Raspberry and nutmeg work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 165 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Sweetmeats Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the roll

  1. Roll out the pie crust into a long oval shape.

  2. Spread a thick layer of raspberry or currant jam, or stewed fruit on the crust.

  3. Wet the edges of the dough with cold water.

  4. Roll the dough up tightly, sealing the edges.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam the pudding for at least 1 hour.

  2. Serve in slices with a sauce made by beating together butter, sugar, and nutmeg or other flavoring.

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. Raspberry + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together165 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Raspberry + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,308 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + nutmegtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,364 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 23,364 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

Pie crust
Forms the wrapper that holds the filling and becomes tender when steamed.
Jam or stewed fruit
Supplies sweetness, moisture and fruity flavor inside the roll.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth texture to the sauce.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and helps it beat into a smooth, creamy texture.

The step that matters

Roll the dough up tightly, sealing the edges. If the roll is loose or the edges do not seal, steam can get in and the filling can leak out, leaving the pudding soggy or broken when sliced.

Swap the raspberry

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, nutmeg. 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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