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Dessert

Alma Pudding

A steamed pudding made with flour, sugar, butter, currants, sultanas, eggs, baking powder, and lemon rind.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Alma Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean and pick the currants and sultanas.

  2. Prepare a well-buttered mold or basin.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together until thick and white.

  2. Beat in the eggs and add the rest of the ingredients.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour in the mixture and steam for 2 hours.

  2. Serve with a suitable 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 + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Forms the main structure of the pudding as it sets.
Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air and give a tender, rich texture.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set.
Baking powder
Releases gas during steaming so the pudding rises and stays light.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps trap air when creamed with butter.

The step that matters

Cream the butter and sugar until thick and white. Beating air into the butter and sugar creates the light structure the pudding relies on. If the butter is cold or the mixing is rushed, the batter stays dense and the finished pudding turns heavy.

Swap the currant

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

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

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