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Hogs Puddings with Currants

A suet and bread pudding studded with currants, spices, sugar, wine, cream, rose-water, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Hogs Puddings with Currants

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix the beef suet, grated bread, currants, spices, sugar, wine, cream, rose-water, and eggs in a large bowl.

  2. Fill clean sausage casings half full with the mixture.

Boil and serve

  1. Boil the filled casings briefly, pricking them as they boil.

  2. Remove the casings from the water, place them on clean cloths, then lay them on a dish.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Mace + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Currant + macetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,791 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Beef suet
Provides fat that fills the pudding and keeps it rich and moist.
Grated bread
Acts as a binder and absorbs liquid, giving the filling body.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set firm when heated.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, softening the texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the spices.

The step that matters

Pricking the casings as they boil. Boiling expands the filling and trapped steam can burst the casings, so pricking lets steam escape and keeps the pudding intact.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, bread, clove, mace, cinnamon, sugar, wine):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, bread, clove, mace, cinnamon, sugar, wine. 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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