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Dessert

Treacle Pudding

A steamed pudding made with flour, suet, treacle, milk, ginger, baking soda, and optional egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Treacle Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. In a basin, mix the flour, baking soda, ground ginger, and salt.

  2. Add the chopped suet, treacle, and milk to the dry ingredients.

  3. If using, add the egg and mix until you achieve a soft consistency.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased basin and cover with greased paper.

  2. Steam for 2 to 3 hours.

  3. Serve with treacle or syrup 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 + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + gingertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Ginger + syruptop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together950 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Flour + syruptop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,540 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the pudding as its starch sets during steaming.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender as it steams.
Baking soda
Reacts with the treacle's acidity to give the pudding lift.
Treacle
Adds sweetness, dark flavour and moisture to the batter.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and binds the batter into a soft mixture.

The step that matters

Steaming the basin. The pudding cooks gently by steam, so the basin must be sealed well and the water kept simmering. If the cover leaks or the water boils dry, the pudding can turn out dense or underdone.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Jalapenofits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, milk, syrup, 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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