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Dessert

Malvern Pudding

A fruit and bread pudding made with currants, raspberries, sugar, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Malvern Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and fill

  1. Dip a pudding basin into cold water and line it with stale bread.

  2. Stew the raspberries and currants with the sugar for 10 to 12 minutes until hot.

  3. Fill the basin with the fruit and cover it with rounds of bread.

Chill and serve

  1. Set it in a cold place until the next day, then turn it out carefully.

  2. Cover with whipped cream sweetened to taste.

  3. Pour some currant and raspberry juice around it.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Bread + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,398 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Bread + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,789 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes
  5. Bread + sugartop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,638 recipes

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

Currant and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,256 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

Stale bread
Forms the structure that holds the pudding's shape and soaks up the fruit juices.
Fresh currants
Add tart flavour and juice that softens the bread as the pudding sets.
Fresh raspberries
Contribute fragrant flavour, bright colour and juice to the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and draws out juice, softening the fruit during stewing.

The step that matters

Chilling until the next day. The bread must soak up the fruit juices and set fully in the cold so the pudding holds its shape when turned out. Turning it out too early can cause it to collapse.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, sugar, cream):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sugar, cream. 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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