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Dessert

Raspberry Pudding

A steamed pudding made with flour, raspberry jam or marmalade, suet or raisins, sugar, baking soda, and buttermilk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Raspberry Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, mix the flour, raspberry jam or marmalade, suet or raisins, sugar, and baking soda until well combined.

  2. Gradually moisten the mixture with buttermilk until it reaches a thick batter consistency.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the batter into a well-greased mold.

  2. Steam the pudding for 2 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + buttermilktop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sugar + buttermilktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic buttermilk to produce gas that helps the pudding rise.
Buttermilk
Moistens the flour and gives the batter its thick, spoonable consistency.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender as it cooks.
Raspberry jam or marmalade
Contributes sweetness, fruit flavour and moisture to the batter.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the pudding a soft, tender crumb.

The step that matters

Moisten with buttermilk gradually. Adding buttermilk slowly lets the flour absorb liquid evenly, producing a smooth, thick batter. Too much liquid at once can make the batter runny and the pudding heavy or gummy.

Swap the raspberry

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, raisin, sugar, buttermilk):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Raspberrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, raisin, sugar, buttermilk. 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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