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Dessert

Steamed Orange or Pineapple Pudding

A steamed pudding made with breadcrumbs, milk, sugar, orange or pineapple juice, eggs, butter, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Steamed Orange or Pineapple Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Soak the breadcrumbs in hot milk for 10 minutes.

  2. Add sugar, orange juice or grated pineapple, lemon juice, and grated orange peel (if using).

  3. Mix in the eggs, melted butter, salt, baking powder, and flour.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered mold.

  2. Steam for 2.5 hours.

  3. Serve with a creamy 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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Eggs
Bind the batter and set into a light, tender structure as the pudding cooks.
Soft breadcrumbs
Soak up the hot milk and give the pudding body and a soft crumb.
Flour
Adds structure so the pudding holds its shape after steaming.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking to lighten the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and adds moisture to the batter.

The step that matters

Pour the mixture into a buttered mold. Butter keeps the cooked pudding from sticking, so it can be unmolded cleanly. The mold should be filled without overfilling, because the batter rises as it steams.

Swap the orange

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

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

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