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Dessert

Raisin Pudding

A steamed pudding made with raisins, suet, eggs, milk, sugar, flour, salt, and nutmeg or bitter almond.

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 ↓

Raisin Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Dredge the raisins in half of the flour.

  2. In a bowl, combine the suet, eggs, milk, sugar, remaining flour, and salt.

  3. Add nutmeg or almond extract to the mixture.

Cook

  1. Place the mixture in a floured bag.

  2. Drop the bag into boiling water to cover.

  3. Cook for 2 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. 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. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Beef + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

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

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 they set during cooking.
Flour
Thickens the batter and gives the pudding its body.
Beef suet
Adds richness and fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the pudding a softer texture.
Raisins
Provide chewy pockets of sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Drop the bag into boiling water to cover. The water must be fully boiling and cover the bag so the pudding cooks evenly and holds its shape. If the water drops below a boil, the batter cooks slowly and can turn heavy and wet.

Swap the nutmeg

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, beef, egg, milk, sugar, 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.

More raisin pudding recipes

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