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Dessert

Steamed Fruit Pudding

A steamed pudding made with flour, spices, suet, molasses, milk, currants, and raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Steamed Fruit Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Sift the flour, baking powder, nutmeg, cinnamon, and salt together.

  2. Add the suet, molasses, milk, currants, and raisins in the order given.

Steam

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered mold.

  2. Cover tightly and steam for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 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. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Nutmeg + raisintop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

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

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the structure that holds the pudding together as it steams.
Baking powder
Releases gas as it heats, helping the pudding rise and become light.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding rich and moist during steaming.
Molasses
Adds sweetness and a deep, dark flavour with some moisture.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and adds moisture for a tender crumb.

The step that matters

Cover tightly and steam. If the cover is loose or the water drops too low, steam escapes and the pudding dries out or turns heavy. Steady, sealed steam cooks the batter evenly and keeps it moist.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, nutmeg, cinnamon, molasses, milk, raisin):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, nutmeg, cinnamon, molasses, milk, raisin. 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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