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Dessert

London Pudding

A steamed or boiled pudding made with breadcrumbs, suet, sugar, marmalade, brandy, eggs, and raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

London Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mold

  1. Grease a mold with fresh butter and line it thickly with stoned raisins.

Make the mixture

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour with the breadcrumbs, then add the suet and brown sugar.

  2. Stir in the marmalade and mix thoroughly.

  3. Beat the eggs and incorporate them into the mixture, then add the brandy.

Cook

  1. Pour the mixture into the prepared mold and boil for three hours or steam for four.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Brandy + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,768 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Breadcrumbs
Provide the bulk and body that hold the pudding together.
Suet
Adds fat for richness and a moist, tender texture.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set as it cooks.
Flour
Adds structure that helps the pudding hold its shape.
Marmalade
Adds sweetness and a bright, citrus acidity.
Brandy
Adds a warm, aromatic flavour.

The step that matters

Long, gentle cooking. The pudding needs a full three hours of boiling or four hours of steaming so the eggs and suet set through and the breadcrumbs and flour become tender. Cutting the time short leaves the centre soft and unset.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Raisinthe original
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Apricotfits less well

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