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Dessert

Very Good Raisin Puddings

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 Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine flour, bread crumbs, suet, raisins, salt, ginger, nutmeg, candied peel, and beaten eggs. Mix in milk until the batter is very thick.

Cook

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

  2. 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 main structure that holds the dense pudding together.
Beef suet
Adds richness and a moist, tender texture as it melts during cooking.
Eggs
Bind the ingredients together and help set the pudding as it cooks.
Fine bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and add body, giving the batter a softer texture.
Stoned raisins
Supply sweetness and chewy pockets of fruit throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Boil the pudding in plenty of water for 4½ hours. The pudding must be fully submerged and kept at a steady boil for the whole time so it cooks through evenly. Water that drops below a boil lets the centre stay underdone and the cloth can dry and scorch.

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.

More raisin pudding recipes

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