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Hunters' Pudding

A suet pudding made with currants, raisins, flour, and spices, boiled in a melon mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Hunters' Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix currants, flour, suet, raisins, lemon rind, peppercorns, brandy, eggs, and salt together.

  2. Add enough milk to achieve a smooth consistency.

Boil the pudding

  1. Pour the mixture into a melon mold and boil for 8 hours.

Serve and keep

  1. Serve with sweet sauce.

  2. To preserve, keep in the cloth used for boiling, tied with paper to exclude dust.

  3. When needed, cut off a portion and boil in a cloth for just over 1 hour.

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. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

  4. Raisin + brandytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,768 recipes

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

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Flour
Forms the structure that holds the pudding together as it sets.
Suet
Adds richness and a moist, tender texture as it melts during boiling.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set firm when cooked.
Currants
Provide concentrated fruit flavour and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Boiling the pudding for the full time. The long, steady boil cooks the eggs and flour through and melts the suet into the batter. Letting the water drop below a simmer or cutting the time short leaves the pudding dense and undercooked in the centre.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against currant, flour, raisin, brandy, egg, milk. 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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