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Dessert

Imperial Steamed Pudding

A steamed pudding made with butter, sugar, eggs, flour, almonds, citron, raisins, lemon and nutmeg extracts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Imperial Steamed Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  2. Beat in the eggs one at a time.

  3. Gradually add the flour, mixing until smooth.

Prepare the fruit

  1. Scald, peel, and chop the almonds.

  2. Cut the citron into shreds.

  3. Remove the seeds from the raisins.

  4. Dust the fruit with flour before adding it to the mixture.

Steam and serve

  1. Fold the fruit into the batter gently.

  2. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold and steam for several 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. Almond + raisintop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  3. Nutmeg + almondtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creaming with sugar traps air, giving the pudding a light, tender crumb and rich flavor.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set during steaming.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the batter so the pudding holds its shape.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps create a light, fluffy creamed base.
Almonds
Add texture and a nutty flavor to the pudding.
Raisins
Add sweetness, chew and concentrated fruit flavor throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Fold the fruit in gently. Overmixing once the fruit goes in deflates the air trapped in the creamed batter and toughens the crumb. Dusting the fruit with flour helps it stay suspended rather than sinking to the bottom.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, flour, nutmeg, almond, raisin. 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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