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Dessert

Crumpet and Muffin Pudding

A pudding made by layering muffins and crumpets with batter, jelly, milk, butter, egg, salt, flour, and yeast, then boiling or steaming.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Crumpet and Muffin Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Butter a plain round mold.

Layer and steam

  1. Layer 2 muffins and 3 crumpets in the mold, splitting the muffins and adding a little red currant jelly in each.

  2. Pour a light batter over the layered muffins and crumpets.

  3. Cover the mold closely and boil or steam for 1.5 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour 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

Muffins
Form the bulk of the pudding and soak up the batter as it steams.
Crumpets
Add a porous, absorbent layer that holds the batter and jelly.
Red currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a tart, fruity flavour through the layers.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the batter, adding moisture to the pudding.
Egg
Helps the batter set and bind when steamed.

The step that matters

Cover the mold closely and boil or steam for 1.5 hours. A tight cover keeps steam trapped around the pudding so it cooks through evenly and stays moist. If steam escapes or the water boils dry, the top can dry out and the batter may cook unevenly.

Swap the red currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Red currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, egg, flour. 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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