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Dessert

Baroness Pudding

A suet and raisin pudding cooked by boiling or steaming for about three hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Baroness Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix the suet, flour, raisins, and salt in a bowl.

  2. Add the milk and stir well until combined.

  3. Transfer the mixture to a well-greased basin.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil or steam for about 3 hours.

  2. Serve with a suitable sweet sauce or a little sugar.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Raisin + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

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

Suet
Adds richness and a tender, moist crumb as it melts during cooking.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Milk
Hydrates the flour so the mixture binds into a moist dough.

The step that matters

Boil or steam for about 3 hours. The pudding must cook gently and steadily for the full time so the flour sets and the suet renders evenly. Letting the water boil dry or drop too low can leave the centre dense or undercooked.

“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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