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Dessert

Marble Pudding

A steamed pudding made with a white batter and a chocolate‑flavored batter mixed to create a marbled effect.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Marble Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, cream together the sugar and butter.

  2. Add the eggs and mix well.

  3. Sift the baking powder with the flour and add it to the mixture.

  4. Stir in the cold water or milk until smooth.

  5. Divide the batter in half and stir the grated chocolate into one half.

Assemble and steam

  1. In a pudding dish, alternate pouring in the white and brown mixtures until all is used.

  2. Cover tightly and steam for 1.5 hours.

  3. Serve with fruit 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Milk + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,128 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Butter
Creams with the sugar to give the pudding a tender, rich texture.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they mix in.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the pudding as it sets.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the pudding rise and turn light.
Grated chocolate
Adds flavour and creates the dark marbled swirls through the light batter.

The step that matters

Assembling the marbled layers in the dish. Alternating the pale and chocolate batters gives the marbling. Cover tightly so steam cooks the pudding evenly without water getting in and making it soggy.

“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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