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Dessert

Steamed Pudding

A steamed pudding made with eggs, sugar, sour milk, baking soda, salt, currants, raisins, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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

Prepare the batter

  1. Beat the eggs and stir in the sugar.

  2. Dissolve the baking soda in the sour milk.

  3. Mix in the fruit and salt.

  4. Thicken the mixture with flour until it is thicker than cake batter.

Steam

  1. Tie the mixture in a cloth, allowing room for swelling.

  2. Set in a steamer and steam for 1.5 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. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

Milk and flour 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

Eggs
Bind the mixture and add structure as the pudding sets.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk to produce gas, helping the pudding rise and lighten.
Sour milk
Its acidity activates the baking soda and adds moisture to the batter.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps keep the pudding moist.
Currants
Add fruit flavour, sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Allowing room for swelling in the cloth. The batter rises as the baking soda reacts with the sour milk and as it heats. If the cloth is tied too tightly, the pudding cannot expand and may become dense or split during steaming.

Swap the currant

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

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

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