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Dessert

Very Good Raisin Pudding

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

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

Very Good Raisin Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine flour, bread crumbs, suet, raisins, salt, ginger, nutmeg, and candied peel.

  2. In another bowl, mix beaten eggs with milk until well combined.

  3. Add the egg mixture to the dry ingredients and stir until you achieve a very thick batter.

Boil the pudding

  1. Pour the mixture into a well-floured cloth that has been dipped in hot water and wrung out.

  2. Tie the cloth securely and boil the pudding in plenty of water for 4½ 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. Flour + raisintop 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. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

All-purpose flour
Provides the starch and structure that hold the pudding together as it boils.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich during long boiling.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help set the pudding as it cooks.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and add body, giving the pudding a tender, light crumb.
Stoned raisins
Provide sweetness and chewy fruit pieces throughout the pudding.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and crumbs so the batter becomes thick and cohesive.

The step that matters

Securing the cloth and keeping the water boiling. If the cloth is loose, water seeps in and the pudding turns soggy. Plenty of boiling water keeps the temperature steady so the starch sets and the pudding cooks evenly over the long time.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Gingerthe original

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