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Dessert

Steamed Pudding

A steamed pudding made with butter, molasses, brown sugar, sour milk, baking soda, flour, raisins, currants, cloves, cinnamon, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Steamed Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, cream together the butter, molasses, and brown sugar.

  2. Stir in the sour milk and baking soda until well combined.

  3. Gradually add the flour, mixing until smooth.

  4. Fold in the raisins, currants, cloves, cinnamon, and salt.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

  2. Steam for about 2½ hours.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  5. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavour.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark colour and deep sweetness.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with baking soda so the pudding rises.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas that lightens the batter.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together as it sets.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Steam for about 2½ hours. Steaming gently and steadily cooks the batter through without drying it out. Letting the water boil dry or the steam drop too low can leave the centre dense or undercooked.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, molasses, sugar, milk, flour, raisin, clove. 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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Molasses 10Apple 3English 3 See all 94 →

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