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Dessert

Half Pay Pudding

A steamed suet pudding with raisins, currants, flour, breadcrumbs, treacle, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour 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 ↓

Half Pay Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, combine flour and baking powder.

  2. Add breadcrumbs, suet, currants, raisins, and melted treacle.

  3. Mix well and gradually add milk until combined.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding basin.

  2. Cover with greased paper and steam for 3 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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Raisin + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

  5. Currant + milktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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
Forms the bulk of the batter that holds the pudding together.
Baking powder
Releases gas during steaming, helping the pudding rise and become light.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it steams.
Breadcrumbs
Soak up milk and add softness, giving the pudding a tender crumb.
Treacle
Adds sweetness, depth of flavour and a dark colour.
Milk
Hydrates the dry ingredients into a spoonable batter.

The step that matters

Adding the milk gradually. Adding milk slowly lets the flour and breadcrumbs absorb it evenly, so the batter reaches a consistent texture without becoming lumpy or too wet.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, flour, 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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