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Pudding

A boiled suet pudding with raisins, currants, spices, and optional candied lemon or citron.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs and spices together in a bowl.

  2. Gradually mix in the milk.

  3. Add the remaining ingredients.

Wrap the pudding

  1. Dip a cloth in boiling water.

  2. Place the cloth on a sieve.

  3. Flour the cloth lightly.

  4. Tie the cloth tightly around the mixture to form a pudding.

Boil

  1. Place the pudding in a saucepan with plenty of boiling water.

  2. Keep a kettle of boiling water nearby to refill the pot as needed.

  3. Boil the pudding for at least 6 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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

  4. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and help the pudding hold its shape as it cooks.
Suet
Adds richness and fat that keeps the pudding moist during long steaming.
Bread crumbs
Soak up liquid and give the pudding a light, tender body.
Flour
Adds structure, helping the mixture set firm when cooked.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the spices and dried fruit.

The step that matters

Keeping the pot boiling for the full time. Long boiling cooks the eggs and flour through and sets the pudding. If the water drops and stops boiling, the pudding cooks unevenly and can turn heavy, so the water must be topped up with boiling water throughout.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, currant, bread, flour, egg, nutmeg, cinnamon. 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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