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Dessert

Hunter Pudding

A steamed pudding made with flour, suet, raisins, currants, sugar, baking powder, and water or sour milk.

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

Hunter Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare a saucepan of boiling water.

  2. Prepare raisins: if using large raisins, pick and stone them; if using sultanas or currants, clean and pick them.

  3. Mix all the dry ingredients together.

Mix and steam

  1. Add enough water or sour milk to make a rather moist mixture.

  2. Transfer the mixture into a well-greased basin and cover with greased paper.

  3. Steam or boil for 2 to 4 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. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  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

Flour
Forms the structure that holds the pudding together as it steams.
Suet
Adds richness and a tender, moist texture as it melts during steaming.
Baking powder
Releases gas during steaming, helping the pudding rise and become light.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a molasses-like depth of flavour.
Raisins
Add chewy pockets of sweetness and moisture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Adding the liquid. Enough water or sour milk must be stirred in to make a rather moist mixture. Too dry a batter gives a crumbly pudding, while the moisture turns to steam and helps the pudding rise and set.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Peachfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, bread, sugar, 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.

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