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Dessert

Golden Pudding

A steamed pudding made with bread crumbs, suet, sugar, orange and lemon juice and rind.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Golden Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Mix all ingredients together well.

  2. If the mixture is not sticky enough, add the juice of another orange.

  3. Fill a greased mold or basin, cover with cloth or greased paper, or a lid if using a tin pudding mold.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam for 1.5 hours.

  2. Serve with sauce made from orange or lemon juice.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Bread + orangetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,084 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

  5. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon 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

Fine bread crumbs
Provide the body of the pudding and absorb the citrus juice to hold its shape.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it steams.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps balance the citrus acidity.
Orange juice and pulp
Adds moisture and bright citrus flavour; the pulp adds body to the mixture.
Lemon juice and grated rind
Adds acidity and aromatic citrus oils from the rind for flavour.

The step that matters

Check the mixture's stickiness. If the mixture is too dry, the bread crumbs will not bind and the pudding may crumble when steamed and turned out. Adding a little more juice gives moisture so the crumbs hold together.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Orangethe original
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Vanillafits about as well
  4. Raspberryfits less well

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