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Dessert

Steamed Pudding

A steamed pudding made with sugar, butter, eggs, flour, sweet milk, baking soda, cream of tartar, currants, and raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin 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. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the beaten eggs and mix well.

  3. Dissolve the baking soda in the milk and add it to the mixture.

  4. Sift the cream of tartar and flour together, then gradually add to the pudding mixture.

  5. Seed the raisins, clean the currants, and dry them.

  6. Dredge the raisins and currants in flour and add to the mixture.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered mold.

  2. Set the mold over boiling water and steam for two hours.

  3. Serve with cold sauce.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air and give the pudding a tender, rich texture.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set during steaming.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the pudding as its starches set with heat.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the cream of tartar to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Cream of tartar
Provides acidity that activates the baking soda, helping the pudding rise.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Steaming the mold. The mold must be set over boiling water and steamed for the full two hours; steam gently cooks the batter through and sets its structure. Too little heat or time leaves the centre wet and dense.

Swap the currant

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

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

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