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Dessert

Steamed Pudding

A steamed pudding made with sugar, sweet milk, flour, butter, egg, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves, citron, raisins or currants, served with a butter‑flour‑sugar sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Steamed Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. In a large bowl, mix together sugar, sweet milk, flour, butter, egg, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves, chopped citron, and raisins or currants until well combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

  3. Steam the pudding for about 2 hours.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, melt ½ cup butter in a saucepan, then whisk in ½ cup flour and 1 cup sugar until smooth.

  2. Gradually add 1 pint of boiling water, stirring briskly, and cook for 15 minutes until thickened.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

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

  5. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Provides the structure that sets the batter into a firm, sliceable pudding.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps hold the pudding together as it steams.
Baking soda
Reacts with the batter to produce gas that lightens the pudding's crumb.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture in the pudding and the sauce.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and, in the sauce, thickens and sweetens the liquid.
Raisins or currants
Add concentrated fruit sweetness and chewy pockets throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Gradually add the boiling water to the butter, flour and sugar mixture while stirring briskly. Adding the hot liquid slowly while stirring keeps the flour dispersed, so the sauce cooks smooth instead of forming lumps. Cooking it afterward lets the starch swell and thicken the sauce.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Allspicefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, milk, flour, butter, egg, cinnamon, 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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