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Dessert

Wiltshire Pudding

A thick batter of eggs, milk, flour, and salt with red currants, boiled in a cloth, sliced and served hot with butter and brown sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Wiltshire Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the eggs, milk, flour, and salt until you have a thick batter.

  2. Gently stir in the red currants.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil the mixture in a cloth for 2 hours.

  2. Turn it out onto a serving dish and cut into ¾ inch thick slices without separating them.

  3. Place a thin slice of butter and some brown sugar between each slice.

  4. Serve hot.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set into a firm, sliceable pudding.
Flour
Thickens the milk and eggs into a batter that holds its shape when boiled.
Milk
Provides liquid that hydrates the flour and gives the pudding a soft, tender body.
Red currants
Add tart fruit flavour that contrasts with the sweet butter and brown sugar.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture as it melts between the warm slices.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a caramel note as it melts between the warm slices.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture in a cloth for 2 hours. The pudding must cook steadily in a cloth so the batter sets through without drying out or becoming soggy. Gentle, constant boiling heat cooks the eggs and flour evenly, so the slices hold together when cut.

Swap the red currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Red currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, flour, butter, 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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