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Dessert

Oatmeal Pudding, New England Fashion

A pudding made from oatmeal, milk, suet, eggs, currants, raisins, nutmeg, and sugar, boiled for two hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and raisin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,377 recipes. Both carry alpha-terpineol, which smells lilac, floral. The science ↓

Oatmeal Pudding, New England Fashion

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pudding

  1. Steep the oatmeal in boiling milk overnight.

  2. Mix the shredded suet, nutmeg, salt, egg yolks, currants, raisins, and sugar with the oatmeal and milk. Stir the mixture well.

Cook and serve

  1. Tie it securely in a cloth.

  2. Boil the pudding for two hours.

  3. Serve with melted butter.

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

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

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

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

  3. Milk + beeftop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

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

What each ingredient does

Oatmeal
Forms the body of the pudding and absorbs the milk as it soaks.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding rich and moist as it cooks.
Eggs
Egg yolks enrich the mixture and help bind it together.
Currants
Add concentrated fruit sweetness and chewy texture.
Raisins
Add concentrated fruit sweetness and chewy texture.

The step that matters

Tie the cloth securely. If the cloth is loose, water can enter the pudding while it boils, making it soggy and diluting the flavour. A firm seal keeps the moisture in and the shape intact.

Swap the currant

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

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

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