Why it works: Buttermilk and currant work together. They rank in the top 32% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92 recipes. The science ↓
Boiled Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Make the batter
Make a stiff batter with buttermilk, cold water, baking soda, and salt.
Stir in your choice of fresh or canned fruit.
Prepare the cloth
Scald and flour a pudding cloth.
Cook the pudding
Pour the batter into the cloth, leaving room for swelling.
Boil for two hours.
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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Buttermilk + curranttop 32% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together92 recipes
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Buttermilk
- Its acidity reacts with baking soda and adds a tangy flavor to the batter.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the acidic buttermilk to produce gas, which lightens the batter and makes it swell.
- Fruit
- Adds sweetness, flavor, and moisture throughout the pudding.
The step that matters
Pour the batter into the cloth, leaving room for swelling. Baking soda reacting with the acidic buttermilk releases gas, so the batter expands as it cooks. Without enough room in the cloth, the pudding can be squeezed or burst, and it may cook up dense and uneven.
“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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