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Dessert

Gloucester Pudding

A steamed pudding made with raisins, suet, flour, milk, egg, lemon zest, sugar, nutmeg, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Gloucester Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine flour, chopped suet, chopped and pitted raisins, sugar, lemon zest, and a pinch of nutmeg.

  2. Beat the egg and mix it into the pudding mixture.

  3. Dissolve the baking soda in a little milk and add it to the mixture.

  4. Add enough milk to achieve a proper consistency for cooking.

Steam

  1. Steam the pudding for three hours.

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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the structure of the pudding as it cooks.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it steams.
Egg
Binds the mixture and helps give it a set, sliceable structure.
Baking soda
Reacts with the mixture to lift it and help it rise.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Adding the milk to the right consistency. Too little milk leaves a stiff, dense pudding, while too much makes it loose and heavy. The batter should be soft enough to rise and set evenly during steaming.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Coconutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, egg, milk, flour, sugar, nutmeg. 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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