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Dessert

Black Cap Pudding

A sweet steamed pudding made with bread crumbs, flour, sugar, nutmeg, eggs, milk, and currants.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Black Cap Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine bread crumbs, flour, sugar, and nutmeg.

  2. Add eggs and milk, then beat the mixture until thick.

Fill the basin

  1. Grease a quart basin and place well-washed and dried currants at the bottom.

  2. Pour the batter into the basin.

Cook and serve

  1. Steam for 2.5 hours or boil for 2 hours.

  2. Serve immediately 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.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Bread + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  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

Bread crumbs
Form the bulk of the pudding and soak up the milk and eggs to set a sponge-like body.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set firm as it cooks.
Milk
Moistens the crumbs and softens the batter so it cooks through evenly.
Currants
Add pockets of fruit sweetness and chew in the finished pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and contributes to the pudding's flavor.

The step that matters

Beat the mixture until thick. Beating the eggs and milk into the crumbs and flour develops a thick, evenly moistened batter. A batter that is too thin may cook up dense or watery, and one left lumpy may cook unevenly, so the texture set here carries through the steaming or boiling.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, flour, sugar, nutmeg, 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.

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