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Dessert

Black Currant Pudding

A steamed pudding made with suet, flour, baking powder, egg, milk, sugar, and black currant jam.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Black Currant Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour and baking powder, then add the chopped suet.

  2. In another bowl, beat the egg and mix it with the milk and sugar.

  3. Combine all ingredients and beat for 2 to 3 minutes.

Assemble and steam

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased basin, filling it one-third full.

  2. Add a layer of jam, then alternate with more batter and jam.

  3. Leave room in the basin for the pudding to swell, tie it down, and steam for 3 to 4 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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + black curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together51 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + black curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together48 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

All-purpose flour
Forms the structure that holds the pudding together as it cooks.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking so the pudding rises and swells.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich in texture.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps set the crumb as it steams.
Black currant jam
Provides sweetness and a tart fruit flavor that runs through the layers.

The step that matters

Leave room in the basin. Batter rises and swells as baking powder releases gas during steaming. Without headspace in the basin, the pudding can overflow or become dense and misshapen.

Swap the black currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Black currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, egg, milk, sugar. 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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