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 ↓
Sultana and Crumb Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Prepare a saucepan of boiling water.
Dip the middle of a pudding cloth in the boiling water and sprinkle it with flour.
In a basin, combine the bread crumbs, salt, and nutmeg.
Rub the sultanas with a little flour and remove the stalks.
In another basin, beat the egg and mix in the milk.
Make the pudding
Add the flour to the bread crumb mixture, then mix in the suet, sugar, and sultanas.
Combine everything with the milk and egg to form a paste.
Turn the mixture into the cloth, tie it tightly into a ball, leaving room for expansion.
Boil and serve
Place the pudding in boiling water and boil for 1 hour, ensuring it is covered with boiling water.
Once done, turn the pudding out onto a hot dish.
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.
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Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together18,623 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Bread + milktop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together11,466 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
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Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together22,662 recipes
Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
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Bread + nutmegtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together5,997 recipes
Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
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Flour + milktop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour and milk 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
- Bread crumbs
- Form the bulk of the pudding and absorb the milk and egg to hold a soft body.
- Suet
- Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
- Flour
- Helps bind the paste so the pudding holds its shape while boiling.
- Sultanas
- Add sweetness and chewy pockets of fruit through the pudding.
- Egg
- Binds the mixture together and adds richness to the paste.
- Milk
- Moistens the crumbs and flour so the mixture forms a workable paste.
The step that matters
Keep the pudding fully submerged while boiling. Any part left above the water will cook unevenly and dry out, since steam alone heats more slowly and inconsistently than boiling water. Keeping the cloth covered maintains steady, even heat through the pudding.
Swap the nutmeg
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, flour, sugar, milk, egg):
- Cinnamonfits about as well
- Nutmegthe original
- Capersfits less well
- Turmericfits less well
Fit is the average pairing score against bread, flour, sugar, milk, egg. 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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