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Dessert

Brown Pudding

A steamed sweet pudding made with suet, bread crumbs, flour, eggs, sultanas, currants, almonds, brown sugar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Brown Pudding

Why it works: Almond and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,514 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Brown Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash, pick, and dry the sultanas and currants thoroughly.

  2. Shred and mince the suet finely.

  3. Mix all the dry ingredients together with the beaten eggs.

  4. Dissolve the soda in 2 teaspoons of water and add it to the mixture.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour into a well-buttered mold lined with brown sugar.

  2. Cover with buttered paper and steam for two hours.

  3. Turn out and serve with white pudding sauce flavored with almond essence.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Almond + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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 mixture and add structure and richness as the pudding sets during steaming.
Bread crumbs
Provide bulk and soak up moisture, giving the pudding a soft, tender body.
Flour
Adds body and helps set the crumb structure of the steamed pudding.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it steams.
Carbonate of soda
Reacts with moisture to release gas, lightening the pudding's texture.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a molasses note, and caramelises against the mold lining.

The step that matters

Dissolving the soda in water before adding it. Carbonate of soda must be fully dissolved and evenly mixed so it releases gas uniformly. Unevenly distributed soda can leave bitter pockets and an uneven rise.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, flour, egg, almond, sugar, cinnamon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, flour, egg, almond, sugar, 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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