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Dessert

Black-cap Pudding

A custard-like pudding made with flour, milk, butter, egg yolks, and currants.

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

Black-cap Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the flour into the milk until smooth.

  2. Strain the mixture into a saucepan.

  3. Simmer until thickened.

  4. Stir in the butter and let it cool.

  5. Add the beaten egg yolks.

  6. Add the washed and dried currants.

Boil

  1. Place the batter into a buttered cloth.

  2. Tie the cloth tightly.

  3. Plunge the cloth into boiling water.

  4. Move the cloth around for a few minutes to mix well.

  5. Alternatively, boil in a buttered basin.

  6. Boil for one hour.

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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + curranttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth batter that sets as it cooks.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that thickens and gives the pudding its body.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender texture to the set batter.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind and set the pudding.
Currants
Provide chewy bursts of fruit sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Simmer until thickened. Flour needs to be cooked through while stirring over heat, or the batter stays pasty and tastes raw. Stirring also prevents lumps and scorching on the pan base.

Swap the currant

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

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

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