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Dessert

Raspberry Pudding

A steamed pudding made with butter, sugar, eggs, flour, baking soda, black raspberry jam, and served with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Raspberry Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

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

  2. Add the eggs and black raspberry jam, mixing well.

  3. Dissolve the baking soda in a little water and add it to the mixture.

  4. Fold in the flour until just combined.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the batter into a greased pudding mold.

  2. Steam for 1½ hours in a moderate oven.

  3. Serve warm with whipped cream.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Black raspberry + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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 sugar to trap air and add richness and tenderness to the crumb.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during cooking.
Baking soda
Reacts with the batter to produce gas that helps the pudding rise.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the pudding's crumb as it cooks.
Black raspberry jam
Adds fruit flavour, sweetness and moisture to the batter.

The step that matters

Fold in the flour until just combined. Overmixing once flour is added develops gluten, which makes the pudding tough and dense instead of tender.

Swap the black raspberry

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Black raspberrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, flour, sugar, 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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