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Dessert

Hunters Pudding

A fruit pudding made with raisins, currants, flour, suet, lemon, spices, eggs, brandy, and wine, boiled for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour 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 ↓

Hunters Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a large bowl, combine raisins, currants, flour, suet, lemon rind, salt, and allspice.

  2. In another bowl, beat the eggs and mix in the brandy and lemon juice.

  3. Combine the wet and dry ingredients, adding white wine if the mixture is too dry.

  4. Butter a mold or line it with a floured cloth, then pour in the mixture.

Boil and store

  1. Boil in a pot for 8-9 hours.

  2. If storing, do not untie the cloth; hang it up to cool.

  3. Once cold, wrap in clean paper and store in a dry place.

Serve

  1. To serve, boil for 1 hour and serve with wine 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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Lemon + allspicetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Brandy + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together620 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Currant + allspicetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,359 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Suet
Adds richness and fat, keeping the pudding moist and tender as it cooks.
Flour
Provides the starchy structure that holds the pudding together as it steams.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set firm when cooked.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Currants
Contribute sweetness and tartness along with a chewy, fruity texture.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavour to the pudding.

The step that matters

Boiling the pudding for 8-9 hours. The pudding must be kept at a steady simmer for the full time so the starch and egg set through and the suet renders evenly. Letting the water boil dry or drop too low leaves the centre dense or uncooked.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, currant, flour, allspice, egg, brandy, white wine):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Plumfits about as well
  3. Blackberryfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, currant, flour, allspice, egg, brandy, white wine. 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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