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Dessert

Leicestershire Hunting Pudding

A suet-based pudding with currants, raisins, flour, milk, brandy, eggs, sugar, and lemon peel, boiled for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Leicestershire Hunting Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix together the suet, currants, raisins, flour, milk, brandy, beaten eggs, sugar, and grated lemon peel.

  2. Boil the mixture for 2 to 3 hours.

  3. Serve with wine sauce.

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. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

  4. Raisin + brandytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Suet
Fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender as it cooks.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets as the starch cooks through.
Eggs
Bind the ingredients together and help the pudding set firm.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and softens the texture of the crumb.
Currants
Add sweetness and chewy fruit pieces throughout the pudding.
Brandy
Adds a warm, aromatic flavour to the pudding.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture for 2 to 3 hours. The pudding cooks gently through the heat of the water, so the pot must keep a steady simmer for the full time. Letting it boil dry or cool too early leaves the centre heavy and undercooked.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against currant, raisin, flour, milk, brandy, egg, sugar. 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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