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Dessert

Currant Pudding

A baked currant pudding made with flour, baking powder, suet or butter, currants, salt, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Currant Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Sift together the flour and baking powder.

  2. Add the chopped suet or butter, currants, and salt.

  3. Wash and dry the currants.

  4. Chop the suet finely.

Mix and bag

  1. Mix all ingredients and moisten with enough milk to form a stiff batter.

  2. Tie the mixture in a floured bag, leaving room for expansion.

Boil and serve

  1. Boil in water for 3.5 hours.

  2. Serve with hard 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Currant + milktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Flour
Forms the structure that holds the pudding together as it cooks.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking, helping the pudding rise and become light.
Suet or butter
Adds fat that makes the pudding rich and tender.
Currants
Add sweetness and chewy bursts of fruit flavour throughout the pudding.
Milk
Moistens the flour so it hydrates and forms a batter that holds together.

The step that matters

Tying the bag with room to expand. The batter rises as baking powder releases gas and the pudding expands while boiling. Leaving space in the bag lets it swell without splitting or leaking water in, and a tight seal would trap the pressure.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, 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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