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Dessert

Raisin and Citron Pudding

A sweet pudding made with bread crumbs, raisins, citron, suet, and spices, baked in a water bath and served with a butter‑sugar sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Raisin and Citron Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Soak the bread crumbs in the sweet milk and beaten eggs.

  2. Add sugar, salt, suet, raisins, citron, nutmeg, and cinnamon to the mixture.

  3. Pour the mixture into a buttered mold with a tight lid.

  4. Place the mold in a kettle of boiling water.

  5. Boil the mold for three hours.

Make the sauce

  1. Beat sugar and butter together until creamy.

  2. Mix corn starch with a little water and stir the mixture into a cup of boiling water.

  3. Let the mixture boil.

  4. Slowly add it to the butter and sugar mixture while beating continuously.

  5. Add vanilla to the sauce.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with the pudding.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

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

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Bread crumbs
Absorb the milk and eggs to form the soft, moist body of the pudding.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set firm as it steams.
Suet
Adds richness and fat, giving the pudding a tender, moist texture.
Sugar
Provides sweetness and helps give the sauce a smooth, creamy body.
Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat, adding flavor and a silky texture.
Corn starch
Thickens the sauce as it boils, giving it body.

The step that matters

Slowly add the cornstarch mixture while beating. Adding the hot starch mixture slowly while beating keeps the butter and sugar emulsified and smooth. Dumping it in at once can cause lumps and a greasy, uneven sauce.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, beef, sugar, milk, egg, nutmeg, cinnamon. 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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