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Kentish Pudding

A boiled pudding made from flour, suet, egg, milk, and seasonings, traditionally served with boiled beef or broiled after cooling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Kentish Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Mix flour, suet, salt, and pepper into a smooth paste with the beaten egg and enough milk or water to form a dough.

  2. Shape the dough into a roll.

  3. Wrap it in a floured cloth and tie the ends tightly.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil the wrapped pudding for 2 hours.

  2. Serve with boiled beef or slice and broil after cooling.

  3. Alternatively, brown in a Dutch oven.

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 + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + milktop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together26,984 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure of the dough once mixed with liquid.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding rich and moist as it cooks.
Large egg
Binds the dough together and adds richness to the texture.

The step that matters

Tying the cloth. The ends must be sealed tightly so water does not enter the wrapped pudding during boiling, which would make it soggy and dilute its flavor.

“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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