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Delhi Puddings

A suet crust apple and currant pudding boiled for two hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Delhi Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Peel, core, and slice the apples.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the apples, nutmeg, lemon peel, and sugar; cook over medium heat until soft.

Roll and boil

  1. Roll out the suet crust thinly.

  2. Spread the cooked apples over the crust and sprinkle with currants.

  3. Roll the pudding up, sealing the ends tightly.

  4. Tie it in a floured cloth and boil for 2 hours.

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Apple + curranttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Apple + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Nutmeg + curranttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,983 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Provide the bulk of the filling and soften into a moist, tender layer.
Sugar
Sweetens the apples and helps them soften into a jammy filling.
Suet crust
Forms the outer wrap that holds the filling during boiling.
Currants
Add small pockets of sweetness and chewy texture within the roll.

The step that matters

Sealing the ends tightly. If the roll is not sealed well, water can seep into the cloth and the filling can leak out during boiling, leaving the pudding soggy and loose.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, nutmeg, lemon, sugar):

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, nutmeg, lemon, sugar. 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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