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Dessert

Raisin Pudding, Baked.

A baked pudding made with flour, raisins, suet, sugar, salt, nutmeg, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin 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 ↓

Raisin Pudding, Baked.

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the suet finely and stone the raisins, cutting them in halves.

  2. Mix the suet with the raisins, salt, sugar, and grated nutmeg.

Make and bake

  1. Moisten the mixture with enough milk to achieve a thick batter consistency.

  2. Pour the pudding into a pie dish and bake for 1 to 1½ hours.

Serve

  1. Turn it out of the dish, sprinkle with sifted sugar, and serve.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the pudding together as it bakes.
Suet
Adds richness and fat, keeping the pudding moist and tender while it bakes.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy pieces throughout the pudding.
Milk
Hydrates the flour so the mixture forms a batter that sets as it bakes.

The step that matters

Moistening the mixture with milk. Too little milk leaves a dry, crumbly mixture, while too much makes a loose batter that bakes heavy and wet. Aim for a thick batter consistency as the record states.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Jalapenofits about as well
  4. Gingerfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, raisin, sugar, 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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