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Currant Roll Pudding

A steamed or boiled pudding made with flour, suet, currants, sugar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Currant Roll Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, combine flour, baking powder, and salt.

  2. Rub in the chopped suet or clean fat until well mixed.

  3. Add the currants, spice, and sugar, and mix thoroughly.

  4. Gradually add cold water until the mixture is stiff enough to form a long roll.

Cook and serve

  1. Wrap the roll in a cloth and tie securely.

  2. Steam for 2½ hours or boil for 2 hours.

  3. 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.

  1. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Flour + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,077 recipes
  3. Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes

Currant and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,256 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
Forms the structure of the dough that holds the roll together while it cooks.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking so the pudding rises and becomes lighter.
Suet or clean fat
Coats flour particles to tenderise the dough and adds richness to the pudding.
Currants
Add sweetness, moisture and fruity flavour throughout the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown slightly as it cooks.

The step that matters

Gradually add cold water until the mixture is stiff enough to form a long roll.. Adding water slowly lets you stop once the dough is firm enough to roll. Too much water makes a sticky dough that spreads and cooks heavily.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar. 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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