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Dessert

Steamed Pudding

A steamed pudding made with raisins, eggs, sugar, flour, sour cream, baking soda, and cream of tartar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour 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 ↓

Steamed Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine the raisins, eggs, sugar, flour, sour cream, baking soda, and cream of tartar, then mix until well combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

Steam

  1. Bring water to a boil in a large pot.

  2. Place the mold in the pot, cover, and steam for 2 hours without opening the lid.

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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Raisins
Provide the bulk of the pudding and concentrated sweetness and chewy texture.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the pudding sets.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the pudding.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and a slight tang that keeps the crumb tender.
Baking soda
Reacts with the cream of tartar and acidic sour cream to produce gas that lifts the pudding.
Cream of tartar
Acid that activates the baking soda, helping the pudding rise.

The step that matters

Steam without opening the lid. Lifting the lid lets steam escape and the pot temperature drop, which interrupts even cooking and can cause the pudding to sink or turn dense. Keeping the lid on holds steady heat around the mold for the full two hours.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, flour, cream):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, flour, cream. 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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