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Dessert

Northumberland Puddings

A milk pudding flavored with herbs, currants, candied peel, sugar, nutmeg, and brandy, baked in buttered cups.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Northumberland Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard base

  1. In a saucepan, heat 1 quart of fresh milk with laurel leaves, peach leaves, or cinnamon for flavor.

  2. Reserve a few spoonfuls of milk to moisten 3 tablespoons of flour.

  3. When the milk boils, remove the flavoring and thicken it with the flour in a double saucepan.

  4. Once thick, set aside to cool until stiff.

Fill and bake

  1. Mash the thickened milk with ¼ pound of butter, ¼ pound of currants, 2 ounces each of candied orange and lemon peel, sugar, nutmeg, and brandy to taste.

  2. Butter tea cups and fill them with the mixture.

  3. Bake the puddings for 15 minutes.

  4. Serve with wine 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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Laurel + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,239 recipes

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Laurel + orangetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together342 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Milk
Forms the thickened base that sets into the body of the pudding.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a stiff mixture as it cooks and cools.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender, moist texture to the filling.
Currants
Add chewy pockets of sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Thickening the milk with flour. Flour must be mixed smoothly into a little cold milk first, then cooked gently in a double saucepan. Adding it directly to hot milk causes lumps, and the mixture must be fully thick before cooling so it sets stiff enough to fill the cups.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, laurel, flour, butter, orange, lemon, sugar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, laurel, flour, butter, orange, lemon, sugar. 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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