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Dessert

Hunters Pudding

A fruit pudding made with flour, currants, raisins, lemon rind, pepper, and water, boiled for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Hunters Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix the flour, currants, grated lemon rind, stoned raisins, and pepper until well combined.

  2. Add enough water to form a proper consistency.

  3. Place the mixture in a floured cloth or melon mold.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil for eight to nine hours.

  2. Serve with sweet sauce.

  3. Optionally add peach-water for a change of flavor.

Store and reheat

  1. Store by keeping tied up in the cloth and hanging it to preserve for up to six months.

  2. When ready to use, boil for one hour.

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 + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  4. Lemon + peachtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together947 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Lemon + raisintop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the bulk and structure of the pudding as it sets during boiling.
Currants
Add sweetness, chewy texture and dried-fruit flavor throughout the pudding.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Lemon rind
Adds bright aromatic oils that lift the flavor of the dense dried fruit.

Swap the peach

The recipe marks peach as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, currant, lemon, raisin, pepper, sauce):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Peachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, currant, lemon, raisin, pepper, sauce. 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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