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Dessert

Northumberland Puddings

A sweet milk-based pudding with currants, candied peel, butter, sugar, nutmeg, and brandy, baked in buttered cups.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Northumberland Puddings

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.

Make the custard base

  1. Heat 1 quart of new milk with laurel leaves or cinnamon for flavoring in a saucepan, reserving a few tablespoons of cold milk.

  2. Mix the reserved cold milk with 3 tablespoons of flour to create a smooth paste.

  3. When the milk boils, remove the flavoring and gradually stir in the flour mixture to thicken.

  4. Use a double saucepan to prevent burning.

  5. Once thick, set aside to cool until stiff.

Fill and bake

  1. Mash the thickened mixture with ¼ pound of butter, ¼ pound of currants, candied orange and lemon peel, sugar, nutmeg, and brandy.

  2. Butter tea cups.

  3. Fill the cups with the mixture.

  4. Bake the puddings in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for 15 minutes.

  5. Serve with wine sauce.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Laurel + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,239 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Laurel + orangetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together342 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, sliceable custard as it cooks and sets.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender, silky texture to the mashed custard.
Currants
Provide chewy bursts of sweetness and fruitiness throughout the pudding.
Candied orange and lemon peel
Adds concentrated citrus aroma and a bittersweet, zesty flavor.

The step that matters

Thickening the milk with flour. Flour must be mixed into cold milk to form a smooth paste before it goes into the hot milk, because dry flour added directly clumps. Cooking it gently in a double saucepan prevents scorching on the base and lets the starch swell evenly into a thick custard.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, laurel, flour, butter, orange, lemon, sugar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, laurel, flour, butter, orange, lemon, 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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