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Dessert

Steamed Pudding

A steamed pudding made with flour, raisins, currants, molasses, and a butter‑sugar sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Steamed Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Combine flour, raisins, currants, and citron in a large bowl.

  2. Beat together molasses, water, and butter in another bowl.

  3. Add cloves, allspice, and baking soda to the flour mixture. Mix in the wet ingredients.

  4. Pour the batter into a greased pudding mold and steam for 3 hours.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt sugar and butter in a saucepan for the sauce. Stir in flour.

  2. Add the egg, boiling water, and vinegar, and cook until thickened.

  3. Flavor the sauce with nutmeg before serving.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  4. Currant + allspicetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,359 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).

  5. Raisin + allspicetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together as it steams.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color, and a rich, slightly bitter sweetness.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses's acidity to lighten the batter and help it rise.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the pudding a tender texture.
Egg
Thickens the sauce as it cooks and adds richness.

The step that matters

Cooking the sauce until thickened. The egg and flour must be cooked long enough to thicken the sauce smoothly. Heating too fast or too little can leave it lumpy or thin, and the egg can scramble if it boils hard.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, raisin, molasses, butter, clove, allspice, sugar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, raisin, molasses, butter, clove, allspice, 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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