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Dessert

English Pudding

A steamed pudding made with eggs, suet or butter, sour milk, raisins, baking soda, salt, nutmeg, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

English Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs well in a large bowl.

  2. Add the chopped suet (or butter) and sour milk, mixing thoroughly.

  3. Stir in the chopped raisins, baking soda, salt, and grated nutmeg.

  4. Gradually add flour until you achieve a stiff batter.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

  2. Steam for 5 hours.

  3. Serve with egg 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. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

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

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the pudding sets.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender.
Sour milk
Adds moisture and acidity that reacts with the baking soda.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk to lift and lighten the batter.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the stiff batter together.

The step that matters

Gradually add flour until the batter is stiff. Adding flour gradually lets you judge the consistency. Too little flour leaves a loose batter that steams heavy and wet, while too much makes the pudding dense and tough.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Jalapenofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, milk, raisin, flour. 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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