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Dessert

Cheap and Useful Pudding

A steamed pudding made with flour, sugar, bread crumbs, jam, suet, and bread soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Hamilton, Margaret · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Cheap and Useful Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix flour, bread crumbs, suet, and sugar well together, then add the bread soda.

  2. Mix a little milk with the jam, then add the jam mixture to the other ingredients.

  3. If the mixture is not moist enough, add more milk.

Steam

  1. Steam for 2 hours or more.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

504Calories
13 gProtein
1 gFat
108 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 2 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Hamilton, Margaret. 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. See the original page.

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. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Bread + flourtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,383 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Bread + sugartop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,638 recipes

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

Bread and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,383 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

Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the pudding together as it cooks.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding rich and tender while it steams.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the pudding a light, soft body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the flavour of the jam.
Bread soda
Reacts with the mixture to help the pudding rise and lighten.
Jam
Supplies fruity sweetness, flavour and some moisture to the batter.

The step that matters

Adjusting the moisture of the batter. The dry ingredients soak up liquid at different rates, so the batter can end up stiff. Adding milk only when it is needed keeps it moist enough to steam into a tender pudding rather than a dry, crumbly one.

“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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