Why it works: Flour and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓
Hunt Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Make the batter
Shred and chop the suet.
Mix the suet with the flour and add all the dry ingredients.
Stir in the raspberry jam and mix well.
Dissolve the baking soda in a little sour milk or buttermilk and stir into the mixture to form a stiff batter.
Steam
Steam for three hours.
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.
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Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Flour + gingertop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together8,564 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Raspberry + gingertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together125 recipes
Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
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Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together14,054 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
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Flour + raspberrytop 20% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,262 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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
- Provides the starch and gluten that give the pudding its structure.
- Suet
- Solid fat that melts during steaming, keeping the pudding tender and moist.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the acid in sour milk or buttermilk to release gas that lightens the batter.
- Raspberry jam
- Adds sweetness, moisture and fruity flavour throughout the batter.
The step that matters
Dissolve the baking soda before stirring it in. Baking soda reacts with the acid in sour milk or buttermilk to release carbon dioxide, which lifts the pudding. If it stays in clumps, the rise will be uneven and parts of the pudding may be dense.
Swap the raspberry
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sugar, ginger):
- Raisinfits better
- Vanillafits better
- Lemonfits better
- Raspberrythe original
Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, ginger. 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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