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Oatmeal Padding

A boiled oatmeal pudding made with milk, suet, eggs, currants, raisins, nutmeg, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and raisin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,377 recipes. Both carry alpha-terpineol, which smells lilac, floral. The science ↓

Oatmeal Padding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oatmeal

  1. Soak the oatmeal in boiled milk overnight.

Mix

  1. In the morning, mix the soaked oatmeal with shredded suet, nutmeg, salt, and beaten eggs.

  2. Add currants, raisins, and sugar, stirring well to combine.

Boil and serve

  1. Tie the mixture tightly in a cloth and boil for 2 hours.

  2. Once done, turn it out onto a dish and pour melted butter over it.

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 + raisintop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

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

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

  3. Milk + beeftop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

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

  5. Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

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

What each ingredient does

Oatmeal
Forms the bulk of the pudding and absorbs the milk to give it body.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set as it cooks.
Beef suet
Adds richness and fat that keeps the pudding moist during boiling.
Currants
Add chewy pockets of sweetness and fruit flavour throughout.
Raisins
Add chewy pockets of sweetness and fruit flavour throughout.

The step that matters

Tie the mixture tightly in a cloth. A tight wrapping keeps the pudding compact and stops water from seeping in during the long boil, so the texture stays dense rather than soggy.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, beef, nutmeg, egg, raisin, sugar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, beef, nutmeg, egg, raisin, 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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