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Dessert

Boiled Puddings

A boiled pudding made with suet, almonds, flour, bread, candied peel, spices, eggs, cream, wine, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Boiled Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the dough

  1. In a large bowl, mix the suet, almonds, flour, and grated bread.

  2. Add the candied citron, orange peel, lemon peel, nutmeg, mace, powdered sugar, and salt.

  3. Moisten the mixture with the beaten eggs, cream, white wine, and brandy until it reaches a good consistency.

Boil and serve

  1. Tie the mixture carefully in a cloth and boil for four hours.

  2. Serve with melted butter, white wine, and powdered sugar, or bake if preferred.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Almond + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Almond + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding rich and tender as it cooks.
Flour
Provides the starch and structure that hold the pudding together.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set as it cooks.
Almonds
Add nutty flavour and a firm, slightly oily body.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness to the mixture.
White wine
Adds liquid and a light acidic note that brightens the sweetness.

The step that matters

Tie the mixture carefully in a cloth and boil for four hours. The pudding swells as it cooks, so the cloth must be tied with room to expand but tight enough to hold its shape. Keeping the water at a steady boil and topped up ensures even heat, so the pudding sets through without becoming soggy or unevenly cooked.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (almond, flour, bread, orange, lemon, nutmeg, sugar):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, flour, bread, orange, lemon, nutmeg, 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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