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Dessert

Thanksgiving Pudding

A steamed pudding made with bread crumbs, milk, sugar, eggs, dried fruit, suet, spices, and fortified with brandy and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,180 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, creamy. The science ↓

Thanksgiving Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Pour the hot milk over the bread crumbs.

  2. Mix in the order given.

  3. Steam in a buttered mold for six hours.

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. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Bread + datestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together100 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Raisin + datestop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together358 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set firm as it steams.
Suet
Adds richness and fat, keeping the pudding moist and tender.
Bread crumbs
Soak up the milk to form the body of the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and contributes to a tender, rich crumb.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness.

The step that matters

Steam in a buttered mold for six hours. Steaming gently at a steady simmer cooks the eggs and starch slowly so the pudding sets without drying out. Water must be topped up so the pot never boils dry, and the mold must be buttered so the pudding releases cleanly.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, milk, sugar, egg, raisin, dates, lemon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, sugar, egg, raisin, dates, lemon. 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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