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Dessert

Essex Pudding

A steamed pudding made with sago, raisins, suet, eggs, milk, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Essex Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cook the sago in enough water to cover it until tender and nearly dry.

  2. Heat the milk and pour it over the beaten eggs and sugar.

  3. Add the flour, suet, sago, and salt, mixing to form a good batter.

  4. Butter a mold thickly and lay the floured raisins in the bottom and sides in your desired design.

  5. Fill the mold with the batter, spooning it in carefully to avoid dislodging the raisins.

Boil and serve

  1. Cover the pudding mold and boil for one hour, maintaining a steady heat.

  2. Dip the mold in cold water and turn out the pudding onto a flat dish.

  3. Serve with jelly 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. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  3. Milk + flourtop 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. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Milk and flour 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 give the pudding its set structure and body.
Suet
Adds richness and fat, giving the pudding a tender, moist crumb.
Flour
Thickens the batter and helps hold the pudding together as it sets.
Raisins
Provide sweetness and chewy texture, and form the decorative surface design.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and adds to its browning and flavor.

The step that matters

Filling the mold with the batter. Spoon the batter in gently so the floured raisins stay in their pattern; pouring heavily can dislodge them and spoil the design on the turned-out pudding.

Swap the raisin

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, sugar, 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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