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Pudding Paste

A stiff dough made from egg, suet, flour, and water, used to encase fruit for boiling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Pudding Paste

Ingredients

Directions

Make the paste

  1. Beat the egg with the suet in a bowl.

  2. Add the flour and mix well.

  3. Gradually add cold water until a stiff paste forms.

  4. Flour the work surface and rolling pin, then beat the paste until it puffs up.

  5. Roll out the paste to the desired size and shape.

Fill and wrap

  1. Place the fruit in the center of the rolled‑out paste.

  2. If boiling, butter a basin and lay the crust inside, allowing it to hang over the edge.

  3. Roll out a small piece of paste to cover the fruit, then fold the overhanging crust over it. Press the edges to seal and ensure there are no cracks.

  4. Butter or flour a cloth and tie it over the basin.

Boil and serve

  1. Boil for two hours.

  2. When done, cut a round from the top crust, stir in sugar, and replace the crust.

  3. Serve with cream if desired.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Suet
Adds fat that keeps the paste rich and tender as it cooks.
Flour
Forms the structure of the paste that holds the filling.
Egg
Binds the suet and flour together into a cohesive dough.

The step that matters

Sealing the crust over the fruit. Any cracks let boiling water seep into the filling and make the pudding soggy. Pressing the edges firmly keeps the filling enclosed and moist inside the crust.

“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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