Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓
Indian Boiled Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Make the batter
Melt the butter near the fire without heating it.
Stir enough Indian meal into the milk to form a thick batter.
Add salt and melted butter to the batter.
Separate the egg yolks and whites.
Beat the yolks until thick and light.
Add the beaten yolks to the batter.
Whisk the egg whites until dry.
Gently fold the egg whites into the mixture.
Wash, pick and dry the currants, then flour them.
Stir the floured currants into the batter.
Prepare the bag
Dip a pudding bag in water.
Wring the bag out.
Turn the bag inside out.
Flour the bag well.
Turn the bag back.
Boil and serve
Boil a pot of water.
Place the pudding in the pot.
Keep a kettle of boiling water ready to refill as it boils away.
Keep the pudding boiling for 3 hours.
Immerse the bag briefly in cold water.
Untie the string.
Turn the bag back.
Place the pudding on a dish.
Serve immediately with any kind of sweet sauce.
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Milk + curranttop 16% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together5,475 recipes
Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).
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Currant + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,856 recipes
Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).
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Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118,967 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together88,785 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Eggs
- Yolks enrich and bind the batter, while whipped whites lighten it and add rise.
- Indian meal
- Forms the thick batter that gives the pudding its body and firm texture.
- Milk
- Moistens the meal and cooks into a soft, set body as the pudding boils.
- Butter
- Adds richness and fat, giving the pudding a smoother, more tender crumb.
- Dried currants
- Add sweetness and chewy pockets of fruit throughout the pudding.
The step that matters
Keep the pudding boiling for 3 hours. The water must stay at a steady boil and be topped up with boiling water as it evaporates. Letting it drop in temperature stalls the cooking and can leave the pudding heavy and wet.
Swap the currant
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, egg, butter):
- Vanillafits better
- Coconutfits better
- Figfits better
- Currantthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, butter. 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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