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Dessert

Raisin Pudding, Boiled

A boiled pudding made with beef suet, flour, ground rice, raisins, and lemon, served with pudding 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 ↓

Raisin Pudding, Boiled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the shredded suet, flour, ground rice, salt, sugar, raisins, and lemon rind.

  2. In another bowl, beat the milk with the egg and lemon juice, then stir into the dry mixture.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a well‑buttered mold and tie it down securely.

  2. Place the mold in a pot of boiling water and boil for 3 hours.

  3. Turn out the pudding, dust with powdered sugar, and serve with pudding 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. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Beef + ricetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,265 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  4. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Rice + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together565 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef suet
Melts during steaming to make the pudding rich and moist.
All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that holds the pudding together.
Ground rice
Gives a slightly crumbly, light texture to the pudding.
Demerara sugar
Adds sweetness and a molasses-like depth of flavor.
Raisins
Add chewy pockets of sweetness throughout the pudding.
Egg
Binds the batter together and adds richness and structure.

The step that matters

Keep the mold sealed and the water boiling. The pudding cooks by steam and gentle heat over a long period. If the mold is not tied down securely, water can seep in and make the pudding soggy, and if the water stops boiling, the pudding will cook unevenly and may turn out dense.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, flour, rice, sugar, raisin, milk, egg. 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.

More raisin pudding recipes

Steamed 49Baked 27Molasses 21Boiled 9Orange 6Apple 5 See all 88 →

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