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Dessert

Mysterious Pudding

A steamed pudding made with eggs, flour, butter, sugar, baking powder, and orange marmalade.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Mysterious Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Separate the egg whites and yolks.

  2. Beat the butter and sugar together until creamy.

  3. Add the egg yolks and mix well.

  4. Beat the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the mixture.

  5. Add the baking powder and orange marmalade, mixing gently.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered mold, filling it two-thirds full.

  2. Steam over boiling water for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

  3. Serve with pudding sauce or custard.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Eggs
Whipped whites give lift and structure, while yolks add richness and help bind the batter.
Flour
Provides the starch and gluten that set the batter into a firm, sliceable sponge.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and a rich flavour.
Moist sugar
Sweetens the pudding and adds caramel notes and moisture.
Baking powder
Releases gas during steaming, helping the pudding rise and stay light.
Orange marmalade
Adds sweetness, citrus aroma and a little acidity to the sponge.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites must be beaten until stiff but folded in gently. Overmixing knocks out the trapped air that gives the pudding its lift, leaving it dense.

Swap the orange

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

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

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