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Dessert

Guernsey Pudding

A steamed pudding made with suet, flour, currants, raisins, eggs, milk, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Guernsey Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ingredients

  1. Shred the suet and chop it finely.

  2. Rub it through the flour.

  3. Wash, pick and dry the currants.

  4. Seed the raisins and mix them with enough flour to coat.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs until thick and light.

  2. Add enough milk to form a batter.

  3. Stir in the eggs, spices, and salt.

  4. Fold in the fruit.

Boil and serve

  1. Dip a pudding bag in cold water, turn it inside out, flour it well and turn the bag back.

  2. Pour in the batter.

  3. Tie the mouth with a strong string, leaving space for the pudding to swell.

  4. Boil water with a plate at the bottom.

  5. Place the pudding in the pot.

  6. Boil for 2.5 hours, adding boiling water as needed.

  7. When done, remove the pudding and dip it briefly in cold water.

  8. Untie the bag and turn it out onto a dish.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

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

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Beaten to hold air, lightening the batter and helping the pudding set as it cooks.
Beef suet
Rubbed into the flour to add fat, giving the pudding a rich, tender texture.
Flour
Forms the body of the pudding, binding the batter and the fruit together.
Dried currants
Add moisture and sweetness as they plump during the long boil.
Stoned raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Leave space for the pudding to swell. The batter expands as it heats and the starch sets during boiling. Tying the bag too tightly can trap steam and burst the cloth or leave the pudding dense.

Swap the currant

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

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

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