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Black Cap

A currant pudding made with flour, milk, eggs, and dripping, baked and browned over meat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Black Cap

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the batter

  1. Grease a basin heavily.

  2. Strew currants at the bottom of the basin.

  3. Mix flour with water.

  4. Gradually add milk until smooth.

  5. Add salt and yolks of eggs.

  6. Beat egg whites to a froth, then stir in the froth.

Bake and serve

  1. Heat dripping in a tin baking dish until very hot.

  2. Pour batter into the hot dish.

  3. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 15 minutes until set.

  4. Place the dish in a dripping pan under meat for 1 hour until browned.

  5. Drain fat.

  6. Slide pudding onto a hot dish, cut into squares, and serve.

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 + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + curranttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. Egg + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

All-purpose flour
Forms the starchy structure that sets the batter into a firm pudding.
Eggs
Egg whites whipped to a froth lighten the batter, and yolks add richness and help it set.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness, giving the batter a smooth, pourable body.
Dripping
Heated until very hot before the batter goes in, it fries the base and encourages browning.
Currants
Add sweetness and chewy fruit pieces that settle at the base of the pudding.

The step that matters

Heat the dripping until very hot before pouring in the batter. A very hot fat sears the batter's surface as it lands, starting a crust that helps the pudding rise and release cleanly. Cool fat lets the batter soak in and turn greasy and dense.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, milk, 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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