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Dessert

Modern Cookery

A boiled pastry filled with butter, optionally containing currants.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Modern Cookery

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pastry

  1. Form the butter into a ball and enclose it in one-third of the rolled-out paste, about ½ inch thick.

  2. Roll out the remaining paste and place the butter-filled portion in the center, with the sealed edge facing down.

  3. Gather the outer crust around the butter, moisten the edge, and seal it carefully.

Boil and serve

  1. Tie the pudding tightly in a well-floured cloth and boil for 2.5 hours.

  2. Serve with caution to avoid breaking; cut a small piece from the top to release the butter.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Flour + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,077 recipes

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

All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the paste that encloses the butter.
Suet
Adds richness and a tender, crumbly texture to the paste.
Good butter
Melts inside the crust to add moisture and rich flavor.
Currants
Add sweetness and chewy fruit pieces throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Sealing the crust around the butter. If the edges are not moistened and sealed well, the butter can leak out during boiling. A tight seal and a tightly tied cloth keep the fat and moisture inside, so the pudding cooks evenly and holds its shape.

Swap the currant

The recipe marks currant as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter. 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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