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Dessert

Diplomatic Pudding

A sweet pudding made with cream, sugar, lemon rind, bread crumbs, suet, marrow, raisins, candied peel, currants, eggs, nutmeg, rum, and orange wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 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 ↓

Diplomatic Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the base

  1. Combine cream, loaf sugar, and grated lemon rind in an enamelled saucepan over gentle heat.

  2. Stir in bread crumbs, flour, beef suet, and beef marrow. Cook for 10 minutes.

  3. Transfer the mixture to a basin to cool.

Finish the mixture

  1. Mix in the minced raisins, chopped orange peel, dried currants, sultana raisins, and beaten eggs. Add grated nutmeg, rum, and orange wine.

  2. Beat the mixture for 15 minutes.

Steam or bake and serve

  1. Butter a mold and decorate with Muscadine raisins. Pour in the pudding mixture.

  2. Tie the mold securely.

  3. Boil rapidly for 3 hours or bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 2 hours.

  4. Serve with a sauce made by dissolving loaf sugar in the strained juice of sweet oranges.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Bread + beeftop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Raisin + orangetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,684 recipes

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

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 set it into a firm, sliceable pudding when cooked.
Bread crumbs
Provide the bulk and body that hold the pudding together.
Beef suet
Adds richness and a tender, moist texture as it melts during cooking.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness to the base mixture.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps the base taste rounded.
Currants
Add chewy pockets of fruit sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Beat the mixture for 15 minutes. Long beating works air and the beaten eggs evenly through the mixture, which helps the pudding rise lightly and cook with an even crumb rather than a dense, uneven texture.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, sugar, lemon, bread, flour, beef, raisin):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Orangethe original
  4. Coconutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar, lemon, bread, flour, beef, raisin. 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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