Skip to main content
Preserve

Boiled Puddings

A boiled pudding made with bread crumbs, flour, suet, currants, raisins, sugar, candied peel, lemon rinds, spices, eggs, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and raisin 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 ↓

Boiled Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Combine bread crumbs, flour, suet, currants, raisins, sugar, candied peel, lemon rinds, nutmeg, mixed spice, salt, and eggs in a large bowl.

  2. Mix in the brandy until well combined.

  3. Divide the mixture into three portions and shape into puddings.

Boil and serve

  1. Wrap each pudding in a cloth and secure tightly.

  2. Boil the puddings in a large pot of water for six hours.

  3. Serve warm.

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the dry ingredients and help the puddings hold their shape while boiling.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the pudding a light, tender body.
Flour
Provides structure so the pudding holds together when cooked.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps browning and flavor development.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavor, and its alcohol carries spice notes through the pudding.

The step that matters

Securing the cloth. If the cloth is not wrapped tightly, water can seep into the pudding during the long boil, making it soggy and loose. A snug wrap keeps the mixture compact so it sets into a firm, cohesive pudding.

Swap the currant

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

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

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

More boiled pudding recipes

Paste 5Plain 5 See all 71 →

You might also like

Green Corn PuddingGreen Corn Pudding64 recipesCornmeal mushCornmeal mush12 recipes