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Dessert

West Riding Pudding

A sweet, baked pudding made with butter, eggs, sugar, flour, baking powder, lemon essence, and jam.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and red currant work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 309 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

West Riding Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Cream the butter in a bowl.

  2. Add the eggs and sugar gradually, beating for a few minutes.

  3. Stir in the flour, baking powder, and essence of lemon.

Assemble and bake

  1. Spread jam at the bottom of a shallow pie dish.

  2. Decorate the edge with pastry leaves if desired.

  3. Pour the mixture into the dish until nearly full.

  4. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until set.

Serve

  1. Serve hot or cold.

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. Lemon + red curranttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together309 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air and give the sponge a tender, rich crumb.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, setting the batter as it bakes.
Flour
Forms the structure of the sponge as its proteins set during baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the oven, helping the sponge rise and stay light.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps create a light, aerated texture when creamed.
Red currant or raspberry jam
Sits beneath the sponge, becoming sweet and fruity as it bakes.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs and sugar gradually. Adding eggs slowly while beating keeps the emulsion stable. If added too fast, the batter can curdle, which may make the sponge heavy or dense.

Swap the red currant

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Red currantthe original

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