Skip to main content
Main

Irish Black Pudding

A sweet pudding made with beef suet, bread crumbs, currants, almonds, spices, eggs, cream, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Irish Black Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. In a large bowl, combine the beef suet, bread crumbs, currants, pounded almonds, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, candied peel, and loaf sugar.

  2. Beat the yolks of the eggs and mix them into the dry ingredients along with the cream and brandy.

  3. Gently fold in the frothed egg whites.

Cook and serve

  1. Place the mixture in a cloth and boil for 1 hour for cold serving or longer if serving hot.

  2. Serve in thick slices, broiled over a clear fire or warmed in the oven.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Almond + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Almond + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks bind the mixture and whites, folded in, lighten its texture.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the pudding its body and soft crumb.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, softening the mixture.
Currants
Provide chewy pockets of sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the frothed egg whites. Overmixing knocks air out of the whites, so the pudding turns dense rather than light. Gentle folding keeps the air trapped inside the batter.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, bread, almond, cinnamon, nutmeg, clove, sugar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, bread, almond, cinnamon, nutmeg, clove, sugar. 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipes