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Dessert

Yebt Good Raisin Puddings

A boiled suet pudding made with raisins, bread crumbs, flour, eggs, and milk, cooked in a tied cloth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Yebt Good Raisin Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine the flour, bread crumbs, beef suet, stoned raisins, salt, ginger, nutmeg, and candied peel.

  2. In another bowl, mix the beaten eggs with the milk until well combined.

  3. Pour the egg and milk mixture into the dry ingredients and stir until you have a very thick batter.

Prepare the cloth and boil

  1. Dip a cloth in hot water. Wring out the cloth and shake it to remove excess water.

  2. Pour the mixture into the prepared cloth and tie it securely.

  3. Boil the pudding in plenty of water for 4½ hours.

Serve

  1. Serve with sweet wine or punch 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. Ginger + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together as it cooks.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich during long boiling.
Eggs
Bind the batter and set as it cooks, giving the pudding its firm body.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and lighten the batter's texture as it steams.
Stoned raisins
Add sweetness and concentrated fruit flavour throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Wringing out the cloth. A cloth that is too wet adds water to the batter and can make the pudding soggy, while a cloth that is too dry can stick and tear. Wringing it so it is damp but not dripping helps the pudding hold its shape and release cleanly.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, bread, beef, raisin, nutmeg, egg, 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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