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Wiltshire Pudding

A boiled currant and raspberry pudding made from eggs, milk, flour, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Wiltshire Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs and mix in the milk and salt.

  2. Gradually add flour until you achieve a thick batter.

  3. Gently stir in the currants and raspberries.

Cook and serve

  1. Place the mixture in a cloth and boil for 2 hours.

  2. Turn the pudding out onto a dish and cut into thin slices without separating them.

  3. Spread butter and brown sugar between each slice before serving.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Eggs
Bind the batter and give the pudding its set structure when boiled.
Flour
Thickens the batter and gives the pudding its body.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness to the batter.
Currants
Add fruit flavour and chewy pockets throughout the pudding.
Red raspberries
Add tart fruit flavour and moisture to the batter.

The step that matters

Place the mixture in a cloth and boil for 2 hours. The cloth must be secured so the batter holds its shape and does not leak or swell unevenly. Steady boiling sets the eggs and flour into a firm, sliceable pudding.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, flour, butter, 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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