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Dessert

Wiltshire Pudding

A steamed pudding made with eggs, milk, flour, currants, raspberries, served hot with butter and brown sugar.

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

Wiltshire Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix the eggs and milk together in a bowl.

  2. Add enough flour to make a thick batter.

  3. Stir in the salt.

  4. Beat the mixture for a few minutes until well combined.

  5. Gently fold in the red currants and raspberries.

Boil and serve

  1. Place the mixture in a cloth.

  2. Boil for 2 hours.

  3. Turn the pudding out onto a serving dish.

  4. Cut the pudding into slices about ¾ inch thick without separating them.

  5. Insert a thin slice of butter between each slice.

  6. Sprinkle brown sugar between each slice.

  7. Serve hot with pudding sauce in a sauce-tureen.

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. Flour + buttertop 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).

Flour and butter 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and help set the pudding as it cooks.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the milk and eggs into a batter that holds its shape.
Milk
Makes the batter liquid enough to mix and cook into a moist pudding.
Red currants
Add tartness and juiciness that contrast with the sweet brown sugar.
Red raspberries
Add fruity acidity and moisture to the pudding.

The step that matters

Boil for 2 hours. The cloth-wrapped batter must boil steadily for the full time so the eggs and flour set into a firm pudding. Too little heat or time leaves it wet and loose.

Swap the red currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Red currantthe original

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

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