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Dessert

Sunderland Pudding

A sweet pudding made with raisins, flour, milk, eggs, butter, golden syrup, and optional baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour 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 ↓

Sunderland Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour, milk, melted butter, golden syrup, and egg yolks until smooth.

  2. If using, add baking powder and salt.

  3. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until firm peaks form.

  4. Gently fold the beaten egg whites into the batter.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking dish and bake for about 45 minutes or until golden brown.

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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Raisin + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

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
Yolks enrich the batter, and whipped whites trap air that lifts and sets the pudding.
Flour
Provides structure, setting the batter into a sliceable body as it bakes.
Milk
Adds moisture and liquid that the flour and eggs bind together.
Melted butter
Adds fat, giving a richer, softer texture to the baked pudding.
Golden syrup
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown during baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the oven to help the pudding rise.

The step that matters

Gently fold the beaten egg whites into the batter. The whites hold air that gives the pudding lift. Stirring vigorously knocks that air out, so the result bakes denser and flatter.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Coconutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, milk, egg, butter, syrup. 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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