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Dessert

Boiled Puddings

A suet-based pudding with candied peel, flour, brandy, eggs, and spices, boiled for hours and served with butter, sugar, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Boiled Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine the chopped suet, minced candied orange and lemon peel, flour, brandy, beaten eggs, and salt.

  2. Add grated nutmeg and other spices if desired.

  3. Mix the ingredients into a paste, adding milk or cream to achieve the right consistency.

Boil and serve

  1. Bring a pot of water to a boil and place the pudding mixture in a cloth or pudding mold.

  2. Boil for 5 hours.

  3. Serve with a sauce made from melted butter, sugar, and wine poured over it, then sprinkle with grated sugar.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Orange + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,746 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Beef + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef suet
Adds richness and a moist, tender crumb as it melts during boiling.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together as it sets.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help set it firm while it cooks.
Candied orange and lemon peel
Adds sweetness and citrus aroma that flavors the whole pudding.

The step that matters

Boiling the pudding. The pudding must be sealed in its cloth or mold and kept at a steady boil for the full time. Water entering the mold or a drop in heat makes the texture heavy and waterlogged, and the eggs and flour need sustained heat to set.

Swap the nutmeg

The recipe marks nutmeg as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, orange, lemon, flour, brandy, egg, milk):

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Rosemaryfits less well
  4. Thymefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, orange, lemon, flour, brandy, egg, milk. 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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