Skip to main content
Dessert

Simple Currant Pudding

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

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

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 ↓

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.

  3. Strain if lumpy.

  4. Place the mixture in a double boiler.

  5. Simmer until thick, stirring often.

  6. Remove from heat.

  7. Add the butter.

  8. Let cool.

  9. Stir in the beaten egg yolks.

  10. Stir in the dried currants.

Bag and boil

  1. Put the pudding in a bag.

  2. 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. 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. 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 its starch swells when simmered, giving the pudding body.
Egg yolks
Thicken and enrich the custard, adding structure and a smooth, rich texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a silky mouthfeel.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour and egg yolks thicken into a custard.
Dried currants
Add chewy texture and concentrated, fruity sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Stir in the beaten egg yolks after the mixture has cooled. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat, and if added to a very hot mixture they can scramble into lumps. Letting the base cool first lets the yolks blend in smoothly.

Swap the currant

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

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

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

More currant pudding recipes

Boiled 18Steamed 5Apple 3Black 3Raspberry 3Red 3 See all 60 →

You might also like

Red Currant JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipesCurrant Ice CreamCurrant Ice Cream32 recipesCurrant SherbetCurrant Sherbet9 recipesCurrant and Raspberry IceCurrant and Raspberry Ice7 recipes