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Dessert

Simple Currant Pudding

A custard-like pudding made with milk, flour, butter, egg yolks, and dried currants, boiled for two hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Simple Currant Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Mix the flour with a little milk until smooth.

  2. Add the rest of the milk and strain if lumpy.

  3. Place the mixture in a double boiler and simmer until thick, stirring often.

  4. Add the butter and remove from heat.

Finish and cook

  1. Once cooled, stir in the beaten egg yolks and dried currants.

  2. Put the pudding in a bag and boil for 2 hours.

  3. Serve with wine 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. Milk + buttertop 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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + curranttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 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
Thickens the milk as it cooks, giving the pudding body.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help set the pudding once cooked.
Butter
Adds fat, giving a smoother texture and richer flavour.
Dried currants
Provide chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Stir the mixture until thick. Flour thickens only when heated and stirred, and cooking it too fast can scorch the milk or leave lumps. Stirring often over gentle heat keeps the custard smooth before the eggs are added.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, flour, butter, egg. 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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