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Dessert

Very Good Raisin Puddings

A boiled pudding made with flour, bread crumbs, suet, raisins, spices, eggs, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Very Good Raisin Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine flour, bread crumbs, suet, raisins, salt, ginger, nutmeg, candied peel, and beaten eggs.

  2. Add milk gradually until the mixture reaches a very thick batter consistency.

Boil and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a well-floured cloth that has been dipped in hot water, wrung out, and shaken.

  2. Tie the cloth securely and boil the pudding in plenty of water for 4½ hours.

  3. Serve with sweet wine or punch sauce.

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. Ginger + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  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. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

All-purpose flour
Provides the main starch that gives the pudding its body and structure as it cooks.
Eggs
Bind the mixture together and help set the pudding as it cooks.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding rich and moist during long boiling.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Fine bread crumbs
Soak up liquid and lighten the texture of the batter.

The step that matters

Floured cloth preparation. Dipping the cloth in hot water and flouring it creates a thin coating that helps the pudding release cleanly and keeps its surface from sticking to the cloth. The cloth must be wrung out so excess water does not dilute the pudding during the long boil.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, bread, beef, raisin, nutmeg, egg, milk. 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.

More raisin pudding recipes

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