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Dessert

The Cambridge Pudding

A boiled pudding made with eggs, sugar, flour, raisins, and veal fat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

The Cambridge Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Beat the eggs with sugar and flour until smooth.

  2. Add the raisins and chopped fat, mixing well.

  3. Butter a mold and pour in the pudding mixture.

Cook

  1. Tie the mold tightly in a cloth.

  2. Boil for 5 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. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and set the pudding into a firm, sliceable structure as they cook.
Flour
Thickens the egg mixture so it holds the raisins and fat evenly suspended.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the batter brown slightly at the surface.
Raisins
Provide chewy pockets of sweetness and moisture throughout the pudding.
Fat from cold loin of veal or suet
Adds richness and moisture, melting during the long boil to keep the crumb tender.

The step that matters

Tie the mold tightly in a cloth. A loose cloth lets water seep into the mold and dilute the batter, while a tight seal keeps the pudding dense and evenly moist during the long boil.

“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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