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Dessert

Rhubarb Pudding, Boiled

A boiled pudding made with rhubarb, suet crust, sugar, and served with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Rhubarb and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 670 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Rhubarb Pudding, Boiled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the crust

  1. Make a suet crust by mixing ½ lb of suet with 1 cup of flour.

  2. Grease a basin and line it with the suet crust.

Fill the pudding

  1. Wash and wipe the rhubarb, then peel off the skin if it's old.

  2. Cut the rhubarb into 1‑inch lengths and fill the basin with it.

  3. Add the sugar and cover with the remaining crust.

  4. Pinch the edges of the pudding together and tie a floured cloth over it.

Boil and serve

  1. Place the pudding in boiling water and boil for 2 to 2½ hours.

  2. Turn it out of the basin and serve with cream and sifted sugar.

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. Rhubarb + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together670 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Rhubarb + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,852 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Rhubarb
Provides the tart flavour and moisture that cooks down into the filling.
Suet
Adds fat that makes the crust rich and tender as it steams.
Flour
Forms the structure of the suet crust that encases the filling.
Moist sugar
Sweetens the rhubarb and adds moisture and molasses flavour to the filling.

The step that matters

Boiling the pudding for 2 to 2½ hours. The pudding must stay submerged in gently boiling water for the full time so the suet crust steams through and sets. Too little time leaves the crust doughy and the rhubarb underdone.

Swap the rhubarb

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, flour, butter):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Jalapenofits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Rhubarbthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, butter. 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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