Name: Currant Puddings in Skins
Ingredients: ½ pound currants, cleaned and dried; ¼ pound raisins, stoned and minced; ¾ pound pounded beef suet; ¾ pound grated bread; ¾ pound brown sugar; grated nutmeg, to taste; lemon peel, to taste; 2-3 cloves, pounded; a little wine

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

Make the filling

Mix currants, minced raisins, beef suet, grated bread, and brown sugar in a bowl.
Season the mixture with grated nutmeg, lemon peel, pounded cloves, and a little wine.

Fill and cook

Half-fill the pudding skins with the mixture.
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.

Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,686 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,318 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,377 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).
Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,070 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).
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 sweet, chewy fruit pieces that give the pudding its main flavour.
Beef suet: Adds fat that keeps the filling moist and rich as it cooks.
Grated bread: Soaks up liquid and fat to give the filling body and a soft texture.
Brown sugar: Adds sweetness and a molasses note that deepens the flavour.

Swap the currant

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

Figfits better
Orangefits better
Vanillafits better
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.