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Dessert

Black Cap Pudding

A sweet, currant‑filled pudding made with flour, milk, eggs, sugar, and baking powder, boiled in a pudding basin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Black Cap Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Grease a pudding basin that can hold 1 pint.

  2. Mix flour, salt, and baking powder in a bowl.

  3. Beat the eggs and add the milk, then stir this mixture into the dry ingredients until smooth.

  4. Add the washed and dried currants to the basin, then pour the batter over them.

Steam and serve

  1. Dip a pudding cloth in boiling water, sprinkle flour on it, and tie it tightly over the basin.

  2. Place the basin in a saucepan with boiling water and boil for 1.5 hours.

  3. Turn out the pudding and serve with sweet pudding sauce.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Currant + milktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
Forms the main structure of the pudding as the batter sets.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set firm when cooked.
Baking powder
Releases gas that makes the pudding rise and become light.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness to the batter.
Currants
Add sweetness and chewy bursts of fruit throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Tying the pudding cloth tightly over the basin. A loose cloth lets boiling water seep into the batter, making it soggy. Flouring the cloth stops the pudding sticking to it as it rises and sets.

Swap the currant

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

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

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