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Dessert

Steamed Pudding

A fruit-filled steamed pudding made with flour, sugar, milk, egg, butter, baking powder, and dried fruit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Steamed Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt.

  2. In another bowl, whisk together the milk, egg, and melted butter.

  3. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix until just combined.

  4. Fold in the cherries, currants, or raisins.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

  2. Cover the mold with a lid or foil.

  3. Steam for 3 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Flour
Forms the structure of the pudding as its starch sets during steaming.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure and richness as it sets.
Baking powder
Releases gas that leavens the batter so the pudding rises and becomes light.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a richer mouthfeel in the crumb.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and adds moisture and softness to the batter.
Cherries, currants, or raisins
Add pockets of fruit sweetness and chew throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Mix until just combined. Overmixing the batter after the wet and dry ingredients meet develops gluten, which makes the steamed pudding tough and dense instead of tender.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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