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Dessert

Steamed Fruit Pudding

A steamed pudding made with egg, sour milk, sugar, baking soda, raisins, cinnamon, allspice, and a sugar‑flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,536 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Steamed Fruit Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix the beaten egg, sour milk, sugar, baking soda, and salt in a bowl.

  2. Add enough flour to make a stiff batter.

  3. Fold in the raisins, cinnamon, and allspice.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the batter into a greased pudding mold and steam for three hours.

  2. Combine sugar and flour in a saucepan to make the sauce.

  3. Add butter and enough cold water to the sauce mixture to dampen it.

  4. Pour boiling water over the sauce mixture and stir until clear.

  5. Flavor the sauce with nutmeg.

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. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 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. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Binds the batter and adds structure as it steams.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with baking soda so the pudding rises and turns tender.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to release gas, lightening the batter.
Flour
Forms the gluten and starch network that gives the pudding its body.
Raisins
Add sweetness and moisture to the pudding as it steams.

The step that matters

Steaming the pudding. The mold must stay covered and the water must keep simmering for the full three hours. Steam keeps the batter moist, and if water runs low or the lid lifts, the pudding can dry out or turn heavy.

Swap the allspice

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, milk, sugar, flour, raisin, cinnamon, sauce):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Gingerfits about as well
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, sugar, flour, raisin, cinnamon, sauce. 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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