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Dessert

Boiled Rhubarb Pudding

A boiled rhubarb pudding made with suet crust, sugar, and rhubarb, served with cream and sifted sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Rhubarb and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 670 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Boiled Rhubarb Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the crust

  1. Make a suet crust by mixing ½ lb. of flour with suet according to your preferred recipe.

  2. Line a buttered basin with the suet crust.

Prepare the rhubarb

  1. Wash and wipe the rhubarb.

  2. If it's old, peel off the outer skin and cut it into 1-inch lengths.

Assemble and boil

  1. Fill the basin with the rhubarb, add the sugar, and cover with the remaining crust.

  2. Pinch the edges together and tie a floured cloth over the top.

  3. Place the basin in boiling water and boil for 2 to 2½ hours.

Serve

  1. Turn it out of the basin and serve with cream and sifted sugar.

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. Rhubarb + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together670 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Rhubarb + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,852 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Rhubarb
Provides the tart fruit filling that contrasts with the sweet sugar.
Moist sugar
Sweetens the rhubarb and draws out juice that softens the filling.
Suet crust
Forms a rich, tender steamed pastry that encloses the filling and holds its shape.

The step that matters

Boiling the pudding. The basin must stay submerged in boiling water for the full 2 to 2½ hours. Steam and water heat cook the suet crust through gently, and if the water drops below boiling, the pastry turns heavy and the rhubarb undercooks.

Swap the rhubarb

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

  1. Jalapenofits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Rhubarbthe original
  4. Nutmegfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour. 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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