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Dessert

Very Good Raisin Puddings

A steamed pudding made with flour, bread crumbs, suet, raisins, spices, eggs, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Very Good Raisin Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine the flour, bread crumbs, beef suet, stoned raisins, salt, ginger, nutmeg, and candied peel.

  2. In another bowl, mix the beaten eggs with the milk until well combined.

  3. Pour the egg mixture into the dry ingredients and stir until you have a very thick batter.

Cook and serve

  1. Prepare a well-floured cloth, dip it in hot water, and shake it out.

  2. Pour the batter into the cloth and tie it securely.

  3. Boil the pudding in plenty of water for 4½ hours.

  4. Serve with sweet wine or punch 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Ginger + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

All-purpose flour
Provides the main starch structure that holds the pudding together as it cooks.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and add body, giving the batter a firm, sliceable texture.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich during long steaming.
Stoned raisins
Add sweetness and chewy pockets of moisture throughout the pudding.
Large eggs
Bind the batter and set during cooking to give the pudding its structure.

The step that matters

Tie the cloth securely around the batter. A loose or poorly floured cloth lets water seep into the batter and can make the pudding soggy or cause it to stick. The floured cloth forms a barrier, and the tight tie keeps the shape during the long boil.

Swap the ginger

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, bread, beef, raisin, nutmeg, egg, milk. 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 raisin pudding recipes

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