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Preserve

Wiltshire Pudding

A boiled pudding made from eggs, milk, flour, currants, raspberries, butter, and brown sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs well.

  2. Add the milk and enough flour to create a thick batter, then mix in the salt.

  3. Beat the mixture for a few minutes.

  4. Gently stir in the currants and raspberries.

Boil and serve

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

  2. Turn the pudding out onto a dish and cut it into thin slices without separating them.

  3. Spread butter and brown sugar between each slice.

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 set the pudding firm as it cooks.
Flour
Thickens the batter and gives the pudding its body.
Milk
Adds liquid that hydrates the flour and keeps the pudding moist.
Currants
Add chewy texture and sweet fruit flavour throughout the pudding.
Red raspberries
Add tart fruit flavour and moisture to the pudding.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that melts into each slice.

The step that matters

Gently stir in the currants and raspberries. Folding fruit in gently keeps the batter evenly mixed and prevents the soft raspberries from breaking up and colouring the whole batter unevenly.

Swap the 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. 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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