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Dessert

Snowdon Pudding

A steamed pudding made with bread crumbs, suet, sugar, eggs, preserves, and candied citron or orange peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Snowdon Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mold

  1. Butter a mold or basin.

  2. Stick some of the citron over the buttered mold.

Make and steam the pudding

  1. In a bowl, combine the bread crumbs, suet, sugar, beaten eggs, preserves, and candied citron or orange peel.

  2. Pour the mixture into the prepared mold.

  3. Steam for 3 to 4 hours.

Serve

  1. Melt some of the preserves.

  2. Pour the melted preserves over the pudding as 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. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  2. Bread + orangetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,084 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Egg + orangetop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,696 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Sugar and orange barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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

Bread crumbs
Provide bulk and body, soaking up the suet and holding the pudding's shape.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich during long steaming.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set as it cooks.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the pudding.
Preserves
Add fruity sweetness and flavour, and are melted into the sauce.
Candied citron or orange peel
Adds aromatic citrus flavour and a bit of chew.

The step that matters

Steaming for 3 to 4 hours. Steam is gentle, so the pudding needs steady heat over the full time. Keep the water topped up and at a steady simmer; if the water runs low or the heat is uneven, the pudding can cook unevenly or dry out at the edges.

Swap the orange

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

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

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