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Dessert

Dutch Pudding

A yeast-based pudding made with butter, eggs, flour, milk, currants, almonds, candied peel, and sugar, baked and served with wine sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Dutch Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the dough

  1. Cream the butter in a large bowl.

  2. Add the beaten eggs and mix well.

  3. Stir in the flour, milk, yeast, currants, loaf sugar, almonds, and candied peel until combined.

  4. Cover the mixture and let it sit in a warm place for 1-2 hours.

Bake and serve

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Pour the mixture into a dish or tin, no more than 3 inches deep.

  3. Bake for 1 hour.

  4. Turn out the pudding, sprinkle with sugar, and 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. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the pudding a tender crumb and rich flavour.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and add structure as the pudding sets during baking.
All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure of the pudding once baked.
Yeast
Causes the mixture to rise during the resting period, lightening the texture.
Currants
Add sweetness and chewy fruit pieces throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Let the mixture rise before baking. The 1-2 hour rest in a warm place lets the yeast leaven the dough. Skipping or shortening it leaves the pudding dense, since yeast needs time and warmth to produce gas and lift the batter.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, egg, flour, milk, sugar, almond):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, flour, milk, sugar, almond. 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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