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Dessert

Boiled Puddings

A sweet pudding made from bread crumbs, flour, suet, currants, raisins, sugar, candied peel, lemon rinds, spices, eggs, and brandy, boiled for six hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Boiled Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the batter

  1. Combine bread crumbs, flour, suet, currants, raisins, sugar, candied peel, lemon rinds, nutmeg, mixed spice, and salt in a large bowl.

  2. Beat the eggs and add them to the mixture along with the brandy. Mix thoroughly until well combined.

Shape and boil

  1. Divide the mixture into three portions and shape into puddings.

  2. Wrap each pudding in a cloth and secure tightly.

  3. Boil each pudding in water for six hours.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the dry ingredients together and add structure as the pudding sets.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the pudding a soft, light body.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich during long cooking.
Flour
Provides structure so the pudding holds its shape when boiled.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps browning and flavour development.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavour to the pudding.

The step that matters

Boil each pudding in water for six hours. The pudding must stay fully submerged and boil steadily for the whole time, since water that drops below a simmer or lets the cloth float free can leave the centre undercooked and soggy.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, flour, raisin, sugar, lemon, nutmeg, egg. 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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