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Dessert

Superior Treacle Pudding

A steamed pudding made with flour, sugar, breadcrumbs, treacle, suet, eggs, lemon, baking soda, currants, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Superior Treacle Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the suet very finely.

  2. Mix all the dry ingredients together.

Mix and steam

  1. Add the beaten eggs, milk, and treacle. Stir well and mix to a soft consistency.

  2. Turn into a greased basin and steam for 2 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve with arrowroot 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 + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Currant + milktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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 main structure of the pudding as it steams.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and add structure as they set during steaming.
Breadcrumbs
Add body and soak up liquid to give a soft, tender crumb.
Treacle
Adds sweetness, dark color, and a deep caramel flavor.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidity of the lemon and treacle to lighten the pudding.

The step that matters

Mix to a soft consistency. If the batter is too stiff, the pudding turns heavy and dense; if too wet, it becomes slack and may not hold its shape. Adding milk gradually and stirring until soft helps the flour hydrate evenly and the structure set properly during steaming.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, egg, lemon, 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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