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Dessert

Paddington Pudding

A boiled pudding made with eggs, bread crumbs, butter, sugar, jam, baking soda, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Paddington Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the butter and sugar until creamy.

  2. Add the eggs and mix well.

  3. Stir in the bread crumbs and jam.

  4. Mix the flour with the baking soda, then add to the mixture.

Boil

  1. Boil in a floured or scalded cloth for 1¼ 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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
Bind the mixture and give the pudding structure as they set.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, keeping the pudding tender and moist.
Bread crumbs
Provide the bulk of the pudding and soak up the butter and egg.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps create a soft, tender texture when creamed with butter.
Baking soda
Releases gas in the batter to help the pudding rise and lighten.
Jam
Adds sweetness and fruity flavour throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Boil in a floured or scalded cloth. Flouring or scalding the cloth stops the pudding from sticking to it, so it can be lifted out whole. The cloth should be ready before the batter goes in, and the pudding is cooked by steady boiling for the full time.

“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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