Why it works: Raisin and flour 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 ↓
Snowdon Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Butter a mold or basin and press the cut side of the raisins onto the butter to adhere.
Make and cook the pudding
In a bowl, mix the suet, bread crumbs, rice flour, salt, marmalade, sugar, eggs, and lemon rind until well combined.
Pour the mixture gently into the mold, cover with buttered paper and a floured cloth.
Boil for 1½ hours.
For a smaller quantity, reduce the ingredients by half and boil for 50 minutes.
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.
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Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together9,075 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Beef + ricetop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,265 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
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Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,366 recipes
Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).
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Raisin + ricetop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together565 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,032 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
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 help set the pudding as it cooks.
- Bread crumbs
- Provide bulk and body, soaking up moisture to give a soft, sponge-like crumb.
- Beef kidney suet
- Adds richness and moisture, keeping the pudding tender as it steams.
- Pale brown sugar
- Adds sweetness and a mild caramel note to the pudding.
- Lemon marmalade
- Adds sweetness, acidity and citrus aroma throughout the pudding.
The step that matters
Boil for 1½ hours. The pudding is steamed in a covered mold, so the water must keep simmering steadily for the full time. Letting it boil dry or drop too low can leave the centre under-set and the pudding heavy.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, beef, bread, rice, flour, sugar, egg):
- Figfits better
- Vanillafits better
- Coconutfits about as well
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, beef, bread, rice, flour, sugar, 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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