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Dessert

Princetown Pudding

A steamed pudding made with flour, bread crumbs, suet, sugar, treacle, milk, egg, ginger, mixed spice, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Princetown Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar, and bread-crumbs.

  2. Add the finely chopped suet, ground ginger, mixed spice, and baking soda.

  3. Warm the treacle slightly to make it easier to pour, then mix it with the egg and milk.

Mix and steam

  1. Pour the wet mixture into the dry ingredients and mix quickly, adding more milk if needed.

  2. Pour the mixture into a greased mold and steam for 2½ 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 + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + gingertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 steams.
Suet
Adds richness and a moist, tender texture as it melts during steaming.
Treacle
Adds sweetness, dark color, and moisture to the pudding.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic treacle to produce gas that lightens the pudding.
Bread-crumbs
Absorbs liquid and adds body to the batter.
Egg
Binds the ingredients together and adds structure.

The step that matters

Mixing the wet and dry ingredients. Mixing quickly keeps the baking soda reacting with the acidic treacle while the batter is still in the bowl, so gas is trapped in the batter rather than lost before steaming. Adding milk only as needed keeps the batter thick enough to hold its shape.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Gingerthe original

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