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Montagu Pudding

A boiled pudding made with flour, milk, eggs, suet, raisins or sultanas, and moist sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Montagu Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix flour, milk, and beaten eggs to a smooth batter.

  2. Add chopped suet, raisins or sultanas, and moist sugar.

  3. Pour the mixture into a basin.

Cook

  1. Flour a cloth.

  2. Cover the basin with the cloth and tie it tightly.

  3. Plunge the pudding into a saucepan of boiling water.

  4. Boil for four 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 + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during cooking.
Flour
Provides the body that holds the pudding together as it cooks.
Suet
Adds richness and a moist, tender texture through its fat.
Raisins or sultanas
Add sweetness and chewy fruit pieces throughout the pudding.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and a molasses-like flavour to the pudding.

The step that matters

Tie the cloth tightly over the basin. A loose cloth lets boiling water seep into the pudding, making it soggy and watery. A snug seal keeps the pudding dense and moist during the long boil.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Blueberryfits less well

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

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