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Boiled Puddings

A boiled pudding made with flour, bread crumbs, suet, raisins, currants, apples, sugar, candied orange rind, spices, brandy, and eggs.

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

Mix and bind

  1. Mix the flour, bread crumbs, suet, raisins, currants, apples, sugar, candied orange rind, nutmeg, mace, and salt in a large bowl.

  2. Add the brandy and eggs, and beat the mixture well.

Boil and serve

  1. Tie the mixture tightly in a thickly floured cloth.

  2. Boil the pudding in water for 3.5 hours.

  3. Serve with German, wine, or punch sauce.

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. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  3. Apple + orangetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Suet
Melts during boiling to keep the pudding rich and moist.
Eggs
Bind the dry ingredients together and help set the pudding's structure.
All-purpose flour
Provides the starch that gives the pudding its body as it cooks.
Bread crumbs
Soak up liquid and add a soft, tender crumb to the mixture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the fruit flavour come through.

The step that matters

Tie the mixture tightly in a thickly floured cloth. A tight, well-floured cloth keeps water out and holds the pudding's shape while it boils. A loose wrap lets water soak in and makes the pudding heavy and waterlogged.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, bread, raisin, apple, sugar, orange, nutmeg. 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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