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To Make a Hunting Pudding

A boiled pudding made with egg yolks, egg whites, cream, flour, beef suet, currants, raisins, candied citron, sugar, rose water, brandy, and nutmeg.

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 ↓

To Make a Hunting Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Beat the yolks of 10 eggs and the whites of 6 eggs with ½ pint of cream.

  2. Add 6 tablespoons of flour, 1 pound of chopped beef suet, 1 pound of washed currants, and 1 pound of stoned and chopped raisins.

  3. Mix in 2 ounces of shredded candied citron, 2 ounces of sugar, 1 tablespoon of rose water, ⅓ cup of brandy, and ½ grated nutmeg.

Boil

  1. Tie the mixture up in a cloth and boil it for 4 hours.

  2. Place it in boiling water and keep it boiling throughout the cooking time.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

  4. Currant + rosetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together494 recipes

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

  5. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks and whites
Bind the mixture and give it a light, set structure as it cooks.
Flour
Thickens the batter and helps hold the pudding together while it boils.
Beef suet
Adds richness and moisture, keeping the pudding tender as the fat melts.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture.
Currants
Add sweetness, moisture and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Keep the water boiling throughout. If the water stops boiling, the pudding cooks unevenly and can turn heavy and soggy. Steady heat sets the flour and eggs gradually throughout the full four hours.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, cream, flour, beef, raisin, sugar, rose):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cream, flour, beef, raisin, sugar, rose. 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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