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Dessert

Chestnut-pudding

A steamed chestnut pudding with currants, raisins, eggs, sugar, and rum, covered in pudding paste.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Chestnut and raisin share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 65 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Chestnut-pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a stewpan, combine chestnut purée and sugar.

  2. Add whole eggs and salt, mixing well.

  3. Stir in currants, Smyrna raisins, and rum.

Fill and boil

  1. Spread pudding paste inside a dome-shaped mould.

  2. Pour the mixture into the mould and cover with more pudding paste.

  3. Wrap the mould in a napkin and tie securely.

  4. Plunge the mould into boiling water and boil for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

Serve

  1. When ready to serve, drain the pudding.

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. Chestnut + raisintop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together65 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  3. Currant + rumtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together155 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + rumtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,908 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

Chestnut purée
Forms the thick, soft body of the pudding.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set as it cooks.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and softens the texture of the purée.
Currants
Add chewy texture and concentrated fruit sweetness.
Smyrna raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated fruit sweetness.

The step that matters

Wrapping and tying the mould. The napkin must be tied securely so boiling water cannot enter the mould and dilute the pudding. Paste covering the mould also keeps the mixture enclosed while it cooks gently in the water.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chestnut, sugar, egg, raisin, rum):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chestnut, sugar, egg, raisin, rum. 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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