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Dessert

Steamed Fruit Pudding

A steamed pudding made from dry bread, raisins, butter, molasses, milk, baking soda, and spices.

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 ↓

Steamed Fruit Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Ensure the bread is very dry, then roll or chop it finely.

Mix and steam

  1. In a bowl, combine bread crumbs, raisins, melted butter, molasses, sweet milk, baking soda, and spices. Mix well and pour the mixture into a pudding mold.

  2. Steam for 2 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve with your choice of 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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Raisin + molassestop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Raisin + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Provide the bulk and structure that hold the pudding together.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, deep color, and a moist, rich flavor.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses and releases gas that helps the pudding rise and lighten.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender, moist crumb.
Sweet milk
Moistens the crumbs so they soften and bind into a batter.

The step that matters

Steam for 2 hours. Steaming gently and steadily cooks the pudding through without drying it out. Letting the water boil dry or the steam drop can leave the center dense or underdone.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, molasses, milk):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, molasses, milk. 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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