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Dessert

Sultana Pudding

A steamed pudding made from butter, sugar, eggs, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour 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 ↓

Sultana Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together by warming and beating.

  2. Beat in the eggs, one or two at a time.

  3. Gradually add the flour in small portions.

  4. Avoid over-beating after adding the flour to keep the pudding light.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam in fancy tall molds for serving whole, or use cake or jelly molds for slicing.

  2. Place in a tight steamer with boiling water and steam for 1.5 hours or longer.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 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. Butter + eggtop 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).

Butter and flour 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

Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air and give the pudding a rich, tender body.
Eggs
Set during steaming to give structure and add richness and moisture.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the pudding together once steamed.
White sugar
Creams with the butter to aerate the batter and adds sweetness.

The step that matters

Avoid over-beating after adding the flour. Once flour is added, vigorous beating develops gluten, which makes the pudding tough and dense rather than light.

“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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