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Dessert

Sultana and Crumb Pudding

A steamed pudding made with sultanas, bread crumbs, suet, flour, milk, sugar, and optional nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Sultana and Crumb Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine bread crumbs, suet, flour, sultanas, sugar, salt, milk, baking powder, and nutmeg if using, then mix well until all ingredients are combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam or boil for about 1.5 hours, similar to Fig Pudding.

  2. Serve warm.

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 + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 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. Bread + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Suet
Adds richness and fat, keeping the pudding moist and tender as it steams.
Bread crumbs
Provides bulk and soft structure that holds the batter together.
Flour
Gives the batter body so it sets firmly during steaming.
Baking powder
Releases gas that lifts the pudding and lightens its crumb.
Sultanas
Add sweetness and chewy pockets of fruit throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Steam or boil for about 1.5 hours. Gentle, steady steam heat cooks the batter through evenly. If the water boils dry or drops to a low simmer, the pudding can turn out heavy or unevenly cooked in the center.

Swap the nutmeg

The recipe marks nutmeg as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, flour, sugar, milk):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Jalapenofits less well
  4. Turmericfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, flour, 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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