Skip to main content
Dessert

Half-pay Pudding

A pudding made with suet, flour, currants, raisins, bread crumbs, molasses, and sweet milk, boiled for three hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Half-pay Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix all ingredients thoroughly and pour the mixture into a mold.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil in water for 3 hours.

  2. Serve with cream 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Raisin + molassestop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 fat that keeps the pudding rich and tender as it cooks.
Flour
Provides structure so the pudding holds its shape after steaming.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and help give the pudding a soft, light body.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture, and a deep brown color.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture and helps bind the dry ingredients into a batter.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy fruit pieces throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Boiling for 3 hours. The mold must stay submerged in steadily boiling water for the full time. Consistent heat cooks the pudding through evenly, while water that drops too low leaves the center underdone and dense.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Datesfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, raisin, bread, molasses, 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.

You might also like

Bread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesMolasses CookiesMolasses Cookies96 recipesMolasses CakeMolasses Cake90 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipes