Skip to main content
Dessert

Bedfordshire Pudding

A custard pudding with candied peel, currants, raisins, and nutmeg baked in short pastry.

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

Why it works: Raisin and flour 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 ↓

Bedfordshire Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Line a flat dish with short pastry and decorate the edges.

Make the custard

  1. Beat the eggs, then add sugar and nutmeg.

  2. Pour in the boiling milk and mix well.

  3. Mince the candied peel and coarsely chop the raisins, then add them along with the currants to the custard.

  4. Pour the mixture into the prepared dish.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake for 30 minutes or until set.

  2. Sprinkle with caster sugar before serving hot or cold.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Nutmeg + raisintop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard as they cook, giving the filling its structure.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, adding moisture and softness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the custard brown lightly at the surface.
Currants
Add chewy pockets of sweetness and fruit flavour throughout the custard.
Valencia raisins
Add chewy pockets of sweetness and fruit flavour throughout the custard.
Candied peel
Adds concentrated citrus-sweet aroma and chewy texture to the filling.

The step that matters

Pour in the boiling milk and mix well. Eggs can scramble or turn grainy if very hot liquid is added too fast. Pouring gradually while mixing evenly warms the eggs so the custard sets smooth.

Swap the currant

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

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

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