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Dessert

Oatmeal Pudding

A baked pudding made with oats, milk, raisins, currants, suet, eggs, salt, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Oatmeal Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. In a large bowl, combine the oats and enough milk to cover them.

  2. Add the raisins, currants, suet, and eggs to the mixture.

  3. Season with salt and spices to your preference.

  4. Mix well until all ingredients are combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased baking dish.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until set.

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. Oats + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,119 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

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

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

  4. Oats + raisintop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together218 recipes

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

  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

Oats
Form the bulk of the pudding and absorb the milk to create its body.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set firm as it bakes.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture through the pudding.
Currants
Add small pockets of tart, concentrated fruit flavour and chew.
Suet
Adds richness and fat, keeping the pudding moist as it bakes.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Underbaking leaves the egg-thickened mixture loose and wet in the centre, while the eggs coagulate and firm as they heat. Baking until set, rather than for a fixed time, gives a sliceable pudding.

Swap the currant

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

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

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