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Dessert

Boiled Puddings

A boiled pudding made from brown bread, suet, currants, sugar, candied peel, salt, nutmeg, eggs, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,057 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Boiled Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Mix

  1. Combine brown bread, suet, currants, sugar, candied peel, salt, and grated nutmeg in a bowl.

  2. Beat the eggs and mix them into the dry ingredients.

  3. Stir in the brandy until well combined.

Boil and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding cloth or mold.

  2. Boil for 3½ hours in a pot of water, ensuring it remains covered.

  3. Serve warm.

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. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

  3. Bread + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Nutmeg + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,311 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Bread + brandytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together976 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set as it cooks.
Brown bread
Provides body and absorbs the liquid, giving the pudding its crumb.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the richness of the suet.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavor to the pudding.

The step that matters

Keeping the pot water covering the pudding. If the pudding is exposed above the water during the long boil, the top dries out and the texture becomes uneven. Steady, full coverage keeps the heat even and the pudding moist.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sugar, nutmeg, egg, brandy. 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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