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Dessert

German Pudding, and Sauce

A steamed rice pudding made with milk, suet, raisins, candied rind, and eggs, served with a sherry sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,374 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

German Pudding, and Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pudding

  1. Stew the rice in the milk until very tender and dry.

  2. Let the mixture cool slightly, then mix in the suet, sugar, candied rind, raisins, and beaten eggs.

  3. Pour the mixture into a buttered basin or a well-floured cloth.

Boil and make the sauce

  1. Boil the pudding for 2 hours and 15 minutes.

  2. Dissolve the sugar in the sherry over heat. Stir the hot mixture into the beaten egg yolks.

  3. Return the mixture to a small saucepan. Hold the saucepan high above the fire and stir until it resembles custard, avoiding boiling.

  4. Pour the sauce over the pudding or serve it separately.

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. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Rice + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,265 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Rice + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together565 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Rice + orangetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Milk + beeftop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Stewed in milk until tender, it forms the body of the pudding.
Beef suet
Adds richness and a moist, tender texture to the pudding.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set as it cooks, giving the pudding structure.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce into a custard as they gently cook.
Sultana raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Stirring the sauce without boiling. Egg yolks thicken as they warm, but if the sauce gets too hot they scramble and curdle. Holding the pan high above the fire and stirring keeps the heat gentle so it becomes a smooth custard.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Orangethe original

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