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Rothsay Pudding

A Scottish pudding made with flour, bread crumbs, suet, sugar, jam, egg, milk, soda, and vinegar, boiled for two hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Rothsay Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the batter

  1. Mix flour, bread crumbs, chopped suet, and sugar in a basin.

  2. Stir in the raspberry jam.

  3. Beat the egg and milk together, then add the beaten egg and milk to the mixture.

  4. Mix the carbonate of soda with the vinegar, then beat the soda-vinegar mixture into the batter.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the batter into a buttered basin.

  2. Tie the basin up carefully.

  3. Boil for two hours.

  4. Turn out onto a hot dish.

  5. Serve with sifted sugar or custard 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. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Milk + raspberrytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,014 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Vinegar + raspberrytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together303 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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 it sets.
Suet
Adds richness and a moist, tender texture to the pudding.
Bread crumbs
Adds body and helps soak up moisture for a softer crumb.
Egg
Binds the mixture and helps it set firm when cooked.
Carbonate of soda
Reacts with the vinegar to produce gas that lightens the pudding.
Vinegar
Acidifies the batter so it reacts with the soda to help it rise.

The step that matters

Beat the soda-vinegar mixture into the batter. Carbonate of soda and vinegar release gas as soon as they meet, so the mixture should go into the batter promptly and be folded in without delay to keep the rising power in the pudding.

Swap the raspberry

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, bread, sugar, vinegar, milk, 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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