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Dessert

Marmalade Pudding

A steamed pudding made with eggs, flour, butter, brown sugar, marmalade, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Marmalade Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the butter until creamy.

  2. Add the flour, brown sugar, and baking soda; mix well.

  3. Stir in the marmalade, then add the eggs and combine thoroughly.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered mold and steam or boil for 2 hours.

  2. Turn out the pudding, sprinkle with sugar, and serve with sweet sauce.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Flour and butter 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and set the pudding's structure as it cooks.
Flour
Provides the starch and gluten framework that gives the pudding its body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, making the pudding tender and moist.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and deepens the flavour.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidity in the marmalade to produce gas that lightens the pudding.
Marmalade
Adds bright acidity and citrus aroma that cut through the richness.

The step that matters

Steaming the pudding for 2 hours. Steam must keep the mold surrounded by steady, gentle heat for the full time. If the water boils dry or the mold is not sealed, the pudding can dry out or cook unevenly, and it will not set properly in the centre.

“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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