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Dessert

Leicester Pudding

A steamed suet pudding with raisins, lemon zest, nutmeg, and sugar, served with wine or brandy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin 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 ↓

Leicester Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour, baking soda, and salt.

  2. Add the lemon zest, grated nutmeg, shredded suet, sugar, and raisins. Mix well.

  3. Stir in the milk until combined.

  4. Grease a mold and pour in the mixture.

Cook

  1. Tie the mold in a floured cloth and plunge it into boiling water.

  2. Boil for 2.5 hours until cooked through.

Serve

  1. Serve with wine or brandy 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Nutmeg + raisintop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  4. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that holds the pudding together as it cooks.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidity in the mixture to release gas and lighten the texture.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and gives it a rich, tender crumb.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy pockets of moisture throughout the pudding.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and sugar, forming a batter that sets as it cooks.

The step that matters

Keep the water at a steady boil. The pudding cooks by heat carried from boiling water through the cloth and mold. If the water drops below a boil for long, heating slows and the pudding may cook unevenly and turn heavy.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, nutmeg, beef, sugar, raisin, milk, 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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