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Dessert

Half Pay Pudding

A sweet pudding made with bread crumbs, flour, suet, currants, raisins, milk, and golden syrup, baked in a basin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Half Pay Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Mix the dry ingredients together in a bowl.

  2. Add the Lyle's Golden Syrup and enough milk to form a stiff batter.

  3. Beat the batter well until smooth.

  4. Pour the mixture into a greased basin.

Steam

  1. Cover with greased paper and tie it in a cloth.

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

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

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Raisin + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Bread crumbs
Provides bulk and a soft, absorbent body for the pudding.
Flour
Gives the batter structure so it holds together when steamed.
Shredded suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding rich and tender as it cooks.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking, helping the pudding rise and lighten.
Lyle's golden syrup
Adds sweetness, moisture and a caramel aroma to the pudding.
Currants and raisins
Add sweetness, chewy texture and pockets of fruit flavour.

The step that matters

Cover and tie the basin securely. The greased paper and cloth seal in steam and keep boiling water out. A loose cover lets water seep in and makes the pudding soggy, while steam cooks it evenly.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, flour, raisin, milk, syrup):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, flour, raisin, milk, syrup. 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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