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Preserve

Boiled Puddings

A boiled pudding made with flour, bread crumbs, beef suet, raisins, candied peel, spices, eggs, salt, and ginger.

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 ↓

Boiled Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare a well‑floured cloth, dip it in hot water, wring it out, and shake it.

  2. Pour the mixture into the cloth and tie it securely.

Boil and serve

  1. Boil the pudding in plenty of water for 4½ hours.

  2. Serve with sweet wine or punch 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Nutmeg + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Raisin + gingertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,242 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Flour
Provides the structure that sets the pudding as it cooks.
Eggs
Bind the mixture together and help it set firm while boiling.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender.
Bread crumbs
Add body and absorb moisture, giving a softer crumb.
Stoned raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Floured cloth and tying. A well-floured cloth keeps the pudding from sticking, and tying it securely stops water entering during the long boil, so the pudding stays dense and holds its shape.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, bread, beef, raisin, nutmeg, egg):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, bread, beef, raisin, nutmeg, 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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