Skip to main content
Dessert

Black Cap Pudding

A steamed currant and milk pudding with butter, eggs, flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Black Cap Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mold

  1. Grease a pudding mold.

  2. Clean the currants and place them in the bottom of the mold.

Make the batter

  1. Mix the flour with a little milk to form a smooth batter.

  2. Melt the butter and stir it into the batter.

  3. Add the remaining milk, salt, and sugar to the batter.

  4. Beat the eggs and stir them into the batter.

  5. Add the baking powder and mix well.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into the mold, cover it, and steam for 1.5 hours.

  2. Serve with sherry or sweet 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Flour
Forms the batter's structure as it sets during steaming.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add richness and structure as they set.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender texture and rich flavour.
Baking powder
Releases gas during steaming so the pudding rises and becomes light.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and keeps the batter moist and smooth.
Currants
Add sweetness and fruity flavour as they soften in the pudding.

The step that matters

Add the baking powder and mix well. Baking powder starts releasing gas once it meets liquid, so the batter should be mixed and moved into the mold promptly. Waiting too long lets the gas escape before steaming, which leaves the pudding denser.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, egg, flour, sugar. 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.

You might also like

Red Currant JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipesCurrant Ice CreamCurrant Ice Cream32 recipesCurrant SherbetCurrant Sherbet9 recipesCurrant and Raspberry IceCurrant and Raspberry Ice7 recipes