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Dessert

Currant Puddings in Skins

A sweet pudding made with currants, raisins, suet, bread, brown sugar, spices, and wine, baked in skins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Currant Puddings in Skins

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean and dry the currants.

  2. Stone and mince the raisins.

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, mix the currants, raisins, beef suet, grated bread, and brown sugar.

  2. Season the mixture with grated nutmeg, lemon peel, pounded cloves, and a little wine.

Fill and cook

  1. Half fill the skins with the mixture.

  2. Cook the puddings as you would apple puddings.

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 + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  3. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

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

  4. Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  5. Lemon + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Currants
Provide the main fruit flavour and a chewy, juicy texture in the filling.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture to the filling.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the filling moist and rich as it cooks.
Grated bread
Soaks up moisture and gives the filling body so it holds together.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a molasses note that deepens the filling's flavour.

The step that matters

Half fill the skins. Filling should not reach the top because the mixture swells and expands as it cooks. Overfilling can cause the skins to split and the filling to leak out.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, beef, bread, sugar, nutmeg, lemon, clove):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, beef, bread, sugar, nutmeg, lemon, clove. 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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