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Currant Pudding Plain

A boiled currant pudding made with suet, flour, currants, eggs, cinnamon, salt, baking powder, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,341 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Currant Pudding Plain

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the batter

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs.

  2. Add enough milk to mix all ingredients together.

  3. Combine the suet, flour, currants, cinnamon, salt, and baking powder.

Boil and serve

  1. Tie the mixture in a cloth and boil for about 3 hours.

  2. Serve with 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. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Cinnamon + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Currant + cinnamontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 starch structure that sets the pudding firm when cooked.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding rich and tender as it cooks.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set as it cooks.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking to give the pudding lift.
Currants
Add sweetness and chewy pockets of fruit throughout the pudding.
Milk
Adds moisture so the dry ingredients combine into a workable mixture.

The step that matters

Boil for the full time at a steady simmer. The pudding cooks through only with sustained heat. Letting the water drop below a simmer for long stretches slows cooking, so the egg and flour mixture may stay wet or unevenly set in the centre.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, egg, cinnamon, milk. 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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