Skip to main content
Dessert

Boiled Fruit Pudding

A boiled pudding made with milk, eggs, baking powder, bread crumbs, currants, and raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Currant and raisin 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 ↓

Boiled Fruit Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine milk, eggs, and baking powder.

  2. Add enough bread crumbs to create a stiff batter.

  3. Fold in currants and raisins.

Boil and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a pudding cloth or mold.

  2. Boil for 1.5 hours.

  3. Serve warm.

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. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

  2. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  4. Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

  5. Milk + curranttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and help the pudding hold together as it cooks.
Bread crumbs
Thicken the liquid into a stiff batter that gives the pudding its body.
Baking powder
Releases gas that helps the pudding rise and lighten as it cooks.
Currants
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy fruit texture throughout the pudding.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy fruit texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Boil for 1.5 hours. The pudding must be boiled steadily for the full time so the eggs and crumbs set through. Cutting the time short can leave the centre wet and dense.

Swap the currant

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

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

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

You might also like

Bread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipesOrange Potato BreadOrange Potato Bread80 recipesRed Currant JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipes