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Dessert

Rhubarb Pudding

A steamed dessert made with rhubarb, coconut, butter, sugar, eggs, bread crumbs, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Rhubarb Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

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

  2. Add the beaten yolks of the eggs and mix well.

  3. Stir in the bread crumbs, stewed rhubarb, coconut, lemon extract, and grated lemon rind.

  4. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

Steam

  1. Steam the mixture for 2 to 2½ 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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Lemon + rhubarbtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together546 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Coconut + rhubarbtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together26 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Coconut + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Coconut + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 lighten it as they are folded in.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and gives the pudding a tender, rich texture.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the pudding body so it holds together when steamed.
Rhubarb
Adds tart flavor and moisture to the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps the creamed butter become light and fluffy.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites gently. Whipped egg whites hold trapped air that lightens the pudding. Stirring them vigorously knocks out this air, leaving a dense result instead of a light one.

Swap the rhubarb

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, coconut, butter, lemon, egg, bread):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Rhubarbthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, coconut, butter, lemon, egg, bread. 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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