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Dessert

Canary Pudding

A steamed pudding made with bread crumbs, suet, marmalade, lemon, sugar, egg, bicarbonate, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Canary Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix the bicarbonate of soda with the bread crumbs.

  2. Combine the salt with the finely chopped suet.

Make the pudding

  1. Mix all ingredients together until well combined.

Steam

  1. Grease a basin and sprinkle some moist sugar inside.

  2. Pour the mixture into the basin and cover with greased paper.

  3. Steam for 1.5 to 2 hours.

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. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  2. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Bread + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,445 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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
Form the bulk of the pudding and absorb moisture to give it body.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it steams.
Marmalade
Adds sweetness, citrus flavour and moisture to the pudding.
Bicarbonate of soda
Reacts with the acidic marmalade and lemon to lighten the texture.
Egg
Binds the ingredients together and adds structure as it sets.

The step that matters

Steaming for the full time. Steaming gently and for the whole 1.5 to 2 hours cooks the dense mixture through and sets it. Lifting the lid or letting the water boil dry can leave the pudding heavy or unevenly cooked.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Datesfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sugar, egg. 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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