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Dessert

Raspberry and Red Currant Malvern Pudding

A Malvern pudding made with raspberries, red currants, water, sugar, butter, bread, and served with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Raspberry and Red Currant Malvern Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the basin

  1. Grease a basin with butter and line it with slices of bread about 1 inch thick.

Make the fruit filling

  1. Remove the stalks from the raspberries and red currants, then combine them with water and sugar in an enamelled pan and boil for 1 hour.

  2. Pour the mixture into the basin, which should be placed on a large dish or soup plate.

Press and serve

  1. Cover with additional slices of bread, place a plate on top, press down with a heavy weight, and set aside to cool.

  2. Once cold, turn out onto a dish and pour over the juice collected from pressing.

  3. Serve with whipped cream.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Red currant + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together84 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Raspberries
Provide the main fruit flavour and colour, and release juice that soaks into the bread.
Red currants
Add tart acidity that balances the sugar and sharpens the fruit flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and helps preserve its colour and texture as it cooks.
Slices of bread
Form the structure of the pudding, soaking up the fruit juice so it holds its shape when turned out.

The step that matters

Pressing the pudding while cooling. The weight and plate compress the bread as it soaks up the fruit juice, so the pudding sets firm enough to turn out whole. Pressing too lightly may leave dry bread or a loose, collapsing shape.

Swap the red currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Red currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, bread, cream. 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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