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Dessert

Boiled Puddings

A boiled pudding made with bread crumbs, flour, suet, currants, raisins, sugar, candied peel, lemon rinds, spices, eggs, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Boiled Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine bread crumbs, flour, suet, currants, raisins, sugar, candied peel, lemon rinds, grated nutmeg, mixed spice, and coarse sea salt.

  2. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs and mix in the brandy.

  3. Pour the egg mixture into the dry ingredients and mix well until combined.

Shape and boil

  1. Divide the mixture into three portions and shape into puddings.

  2. Wrap each pudding in a cloth and secure tightly.

  3. Boil the puddings in a large pot of water for six 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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the dry ingredients together and add richness and structure to the puddings.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the puddings moist and tender as they cook.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the liquid and give the pudding body and a soft texture.
Flour
Adds structure so the mixture holds its shape during boiling.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown slightly at the surface.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavor to the pudding.

The step that matters

Securing the cloth around each pudding. If the cloth is loose, water seeps in and the pudding becomes soggy and falls apart. A tight wrap keeps the mixture compact and moist while it boils.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, flour, raisin, sugar, lemon, nutmeg, egg. 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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