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Dessert

Diplomatic Pudding

A steamed pudding made with grated bread, marrow, sugar, flour, raisins, currants, peel, eggs, milk, lemon rind, and cherries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Diplomatic Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. In a bowl, mix the grated bread, flour, marrow, and sugar.

  2. Boil the milk with the grated lemon rind, then pour it over the mixture in the bowl.

  3. Cover and let it sit for about 10 minutes.

Add the fruit and eggs

  1. Add the prepared fruit, stoned raisins, and chopped peel.

  2. Beat the eggs until light, then mix them in thoroughly.

Mould and steam

  1. Butter a pudding mold and dust it with fine sugar.

  2. Decorate the bottom with cherries or other candied fruits.

  3. Pour the pudding mixture into the mold, cover with buttered paper, and steam for 2 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 + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

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 set into a light, firm pudding when steamed.
Grated bread
Forms the body of the pudding and soaks up the warm milk for a soft crumb.
Milk
Moistens the bread and carries the lemon flavour through the batter.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the pudding a tender texture.
Marrow
Adds richness and fat, giving the pudding a moist, tender crumb.

The step that matters

Steaming the pudding. Steam must be kept gentle and steady for the full 2 hours so the eggs set evenly without the pudding turning rubbery or drying out at the edges.

Swap the currant

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

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

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