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Dessert

A Superior Raisin Pudding

A pudding made from stale bread crumbs, flour, suet, raisins, spices, sugar, candied citron, eggs, and milk or brandy, boiled for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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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 ↓

A Superior Raisin Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Grate the stale bread crumbs finely and mix them with flour, suet, raisins, salt, nutmeg, ginger, mace, sugar, candied citron, eggs, and milk or brandy.

  2. Stir and beat the mixture thoroughly.

Boil the pudding

  1. Pour the mixture into a thick, well-floured cloth.

  2. Boil the pudding for 4 hours.

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. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Nutmeg + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture together and help give the cooked pudding its set structure.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the pudding body and a soft, tender crumb.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Raisins
Provide sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
All-purpose flour
Adds starch that thickens the mixture and helps hold its shape.

The step that matters

Pour the mixture into a well-floured cloth. The cloth must be thick and well floured so the pudding does not stick and keeps its shape while boiling. A loose or poorly floured cloth can let water soak into the pudding and make it heavy.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, flour, beef, raisin, nutmeg, ginger, sugar. 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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