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Dessert

Paradise Pudding

A steamed pudding made with bread crumbs, suet, apples, currants, raisins, milk, sugar, and flour.

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

Paradise Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine bread crumbs, suet, eggs, minced apples, currants, raisins, milk, and spices.

  2. Add sugar and mix well.

  3. Thicken the mixture with flour as needed.

Cook

  1. Pour the mixture into a mold.

  2. Steam or boil for 3½ 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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Apple + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  5. Apple + curranttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set firm as the pudding cooks.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the milk and add body so the pudding holds its shape.
Suet
Adds fat and richness, keeping the pudding moist during long cooking.
Apples
Contribute moisture, tartness and fruity flavor to the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and adds to its moist, tender texture.
Flour
Thickens the mixture so it holds together in the mold.

The step that matters

Thicken the mixture with flour as needed. Flour thickens the batter by absorbing liquid and forming a stable structure. Too little leaves the pudding loose and watery, while too much makes it dense and heavy once steamed.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, egg, apple, raisin, 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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