Name: Baroness Pudding
Ingredients: ¾ pound suet, finely chopped; ¾ pound raisins, stoned and halved; ¾ pound flour; ½ pint milk; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt

Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Baroness Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Prepare the suet by removing the skin and chopping it finely.
Mix the suet, raisins, salt, and flour in a bowl.
Moisten the mixture with milk and stir well.

Cook and serve

Tie the pudding in a floured cloth that has been wrung out in boiling water.
Place the pudding in a saucepan of boiling water and boil for 4 hours.
Serve with sweet 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.

Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,075 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Raisin + milktop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,155 recipes

Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Suet: Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Flour: Provides the structure that holds the pudding together while it steams.
Raisins: Add sweetness and chewy pieces throughout the pudding.
Milk: Moistens the dry ingredients so they form a cohesive mixture.

The step that matters

Tie the pudding in a floured cloth. The cloth must be wrung out well so it is damp but not dripping, and floured so the pudding does not stick. Too much water can make the pudding soggy, while a dry or loose cloth can let the pudding stick or fall apart during the long boil.

“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.

White Cake431 recipes

Pound Cake373 recipes

Orange Bundt Cake349 recipes

Spice Cake344 recipes

Like knowing why a recipe works?

The free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.

Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.

Baroness Pudding