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Dessert

Black Cap Pudding

A milk and egg pudding with currants, flour, sugar, nutmeg, and salt, boiled for two hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Black Cap Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Mix all the dry ingredients in a bowl.

  2. Beat the egg and add the milk to it.

  3. Pour the milk and egg mixture over the dry ingredients and mix well.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil for 2 hours.

  2. Serve hot with cream.

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 + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour 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

Egg
Binds the batter and helps it set into a firm, cohesive pudding when cooked.
Flour
Thickens the batter and gives the pudding its body as the starch cooks.
Milk
Provides the liquid that hydrates the flour and keeps the pudding moist.
Currants
Add fruitiness and chewy pockets of sweetness throughout the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the flavour of the dried fruit.

The step that matters

Mixing the wet and dry ingredients. Pour the milk and egg mixture over the dry ingredients and mix well. Thorough mixing hydrates the flour evenly, so the batter has no dry lumps and the pudding sets with a smooth, uniform texture.

Swap the currant

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

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

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