Skip to main content
Dessert

Steamed Pudding

A steamed pudding made with suet, currants, raisins, flour, bread crumbs, syrup, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Steamed Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the minced suet with currants, raisins, flour, bread crumbs, and syrup.

  2. Moisten the mixture with milk and beat thoroughly.

Steam and serve

  1. Transfer to a buttered mold and 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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  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 milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Suet
Adds fat that melts during steaming, keeping the pudding moist and rich.
All-purpose flour
Provides starch and structure so the pudding holds together after steaming.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and add body, giving the pudding a tender, light crumb.
Milk
Moistens the dry ingredients so they bind into a workable batter.
Syrup
Adds sweetness and moisture, along with a deeper flavor.

The step that matters

Moisten the mixture with milk and beat thoroughly. Enough liquid must be absorbed by the flour and crumbs so the batter binds without becoming soupy. Thorough beating distributes the moisture and fat evenly, so the steamed pudding cooks uniformly and has a consistent texture.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, flour, bread, syrup, milk. 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.

More steamed pudding recipes

Molasses 10Apple 3English 3 See all 94 →

You might also like

Bread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipesOrange Potato BreadOrange Potato Bread80 recipesRed Currant JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipes