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Dessert

Diplomatic Pudding

A steamed pudding of grated bread, milk, eggs, dried fruit and candied peel, served with a lemon syrup sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Mix the grated bread, flour, marrow, and sugar in a bowl.

  2. Boil the milk with the grated lemon rind, then pour it over the mixture in the bowl.

  3. Cover and let it stand for about 10 minutes.

  4. Add the prepared fruit, stoned raisins, and chopped peel.

  5. Beat the eggs until very light, then mix them thoroughly into the mixture.

Mold and steam

  1. Butter a pudding mold and dust it with fine sugar.

  2. Decorate the bottom with a few cherries or other candied fruits.

  3. Pour the pudding mixture into the mold and cover with buttered paper.

  4. Steam for 2 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve with syrup sauce made from lemon juice.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  5. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Beaten until light, they bind the mixture and help it set as it steams.
Bread
Soaked in hot milk, it absorbs liquid and gives the pudding a soft, moist body.
Marrow
Adds richness and fat, giving the pudding a tender, smooth texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown lightly and stay tender.
Flour
Adds body, helping the mixture hold its shape once steamed.

The step that matters

Beat the eggs until very light. Beaten eggs trap air that lightens the pudding; under-beaten eggs leave it dense, while thorough mixing spreads them evenly so the custard-like structure sets uniformly during steaming.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Datesfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, sugar, flour, raisin, egg, 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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