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Dessert

Pudding

A boiled pudding made with suet, bread crumbs, raisins, orange rind, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Soak the bread crumbs in boiling milk.

  2. Mix in the minced suet, raisins, salt, and orange rind.

  3. Add the egg yolks and mix well.

Boil and serve

  1. Boil the pudding for 2 hours.

  2. Serve with a very sweet sauce, without adding sugar.

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 + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Raisin + orangetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,684 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

  5. Milk + orangetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,696 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Soak up the boiling milk and give the pudding body and a soft crumb.
Suet
Melts during boiling, adding fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender.
Raisins
Add sweetness, chewy texture, and pockets of moisture throughout the pudding.
Eggs
Egg yolks enrich the mixture and help bind it as it sets.

The step that matters

Boil the pudding for the full 2 hours. A steady boil cooks and sets the pudding evenly. If the water drops too low or stops boiling, the pudding can cook unevenly and turn dense.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, bread, raisin, egg):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Datesfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, bread, raisin, 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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