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Dessert

Pound Pudding

A boiled pudding made with suet, currants, raisins, bread crumbs, flour, mixed peel, spices, milk, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour 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 ↓

Pound Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix all the ingredients well together, adding more milk if necessary.

  2. Turn the mixture into a well-buttered mold.

  3. Boil for about 3½ to 4 hours.

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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Ginger + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Suet
Melts during boiling to enrich the pudding and keep it moist and tender.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set firmly as it cooks.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the milk and eggs, giving the pudding body and a soft crumb.
Flour
Adds structure, helping the pudding hold its shape when turned out.
Raisins
Provide sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Currants
Add sweetness, moisture and concentrated fruit flavour.

The step that matters

Adding milk to the mixture. The mixture should be moist enough to hold together without being runny. Too little milk gives a dry, crumbly pudding, while too much makes it heavy and slack. Adjust gradually.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, bread, flour, ginger, nutmeg, 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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