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Dessert

Raisin Pudding, Baked

A baked pudding made with flour, raisins, suet, sugar, salt, nutmeg, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Raisin Pudding, Baked

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Chop the suet finely.

  2. Stone the raisins and cut them in halves.

Mix and moisten

  1. Mix the suet with the raisins, salt, sugar, and grated nutmeg.

  2. Moisten the mixture with enough milk to achieve a thick batter consistency.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the pudding into a pie dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for about 1 hour.

  2. Turn it out of the dish, sprinkle with sifted sugar, and serve.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 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
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together as it bakes.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and binds the mixture into a batter that sets when baked.
Suet
Adds fat for richness and a tender, moist crumb.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy moisture throughout the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown lightly in the oven.

The step that matters

Moistening the mixture with milk. Flour starch absorbs liquid and sets during baking. Too little milk leaves a dry, crumbly pudding, while too much makes it loose and slow to firm up, so aim for a thick batter.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Jalapenofits about as well
  4. Gingerfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, raisin, sugar, 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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