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Dessert

German Pudding, and Sauce

A steamed rice pudding made with suet, sugar, candied peel, raisins, eggs, and wine, served with a sweet sherry sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,374 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

German Pudding, and Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Stew the rice in the milk in a pot until very tender and dry.

  2. Let the mixture cool slightly, then mix in the chopped beef suet, sugar, candied peel, sultana raisins, and beaten eggs.

  3. Pour the mixture into a buttered basin or a well‑floured cloth.

  4. Boil the pudding for 2 hours and 15 minutes.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Dissolve the sugar in the sherry over low heat for the sauce.

  2. Stir the hot sugar‑sherry mixture into the beaten yolks of the eggs, holding the saucepan high above the fire.

  3. Stir until the sauce resembles custard, but do not let it boil.

  4. Pour the sauce over the pudding or serve it in a tureen.

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 + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Rice + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,265 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Rice + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together565 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Rice + orangetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Milk + beeftop 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

Eggs
Bind the pudding and thicken the sauce into a custard-like texture when gently heated.
Rice
Provides the bulk of the pudding, softening fully in the milk to form its body.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and sauce, and dissolves into the sherry to flavour the sauce.
Sultana raisins
Add sweetness and chewy pockets of fruit throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Stir the sauce off the boil. Egg yolks thicken into custard when gently heated, but if the sauce boils the eggs can curdle and turn grainy, so hold the pan high and stir constantly.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, rice, beef, sugar, raisin, egg, sherry):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, rice, beef, sugar, raisin, egg, sherry. 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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