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Dessert

Brown Cream Pudding

A sweet pudding made from brown sugar, raisins, and fruit, set into a creamy texture and dusted with icing sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,180 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, creamy. The science ↓

Brown Cream Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the fondant base

  1. Dissolve the brown sugar in the water in a large pan over heat.

  2. Add the glucose and bring the mixture to a boil until it reaches a stiff ball stage.

  3. Pour the mixture onto a damp pouring plate and let it cool slightly.

  4. Once nearly cold, cream the mixture by rubbing and working it with a palette knife until it becomes opaque, stiff, and creamy.

Add the fruit and fill the basins

  1. Prepare the fruit and mix it into the creamed mixture using a spatula.

  2. Before adding the mixture to the basins, sprinkle a little icing sugar inside to prevent sticking.

  3. Divide the mixture into small basins, each holding about one pound, and press it down well.

  4. Let the puddings set in the basins.

Finish and serve

  1. Once set, remove them from the basins and brush with a thin solution of gum.

  2. Dust the tops with icing sugar to create a frosted appearance.

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 + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes

Sugar and currant barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,256 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

Brown sugar
Forms the sweet, fudge-like body of the pudding when cooked and creamed.
Glucose
Inhibits sugar crystallisation, keeping the mixture smooth and soft rather than grainy.
Raisins
Add chewiness and concentrated sweetness throughout the set mixture.
Sultanas
Add chewiness and concentrated sweetness throughout the set mixture.
Mixed peel
Adds bitter-citrus aroma and a contrasting chewy texture.

The step that matters

Cooking to the stiff ball stage. Sugar must reach the correct concentration to set firm once cooled. Underheating leaves the mixture soft and unable to hold its shape; overheating makes it hard and brittle.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, raisin):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Datesfits about as well
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, raisin. 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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