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Dessert

Steamed Fruit Pudding

A steamed pudding made with sugar, butter, flour, bread crumbs, raisins, currants, citron, milk, eggs, lemon, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 Fruit Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream together the butter and sugar.

  2. Add the beaten eggs and milk, mixing well.

  3. Stir in the flour, bread crumbs, raisins, currants, citron, and ground spice.

Steam and serve

  1. Grease cans or molds with tight-fitting covers.

  2. Fill the molds with the pudding mixture, leaving room for it to swell.

  3. Steam for 2 hours.

  4. Serve with brandy sauce or hard 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 + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

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

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

  5. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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 add structure and richness as they set during steaming.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the pudding a tender crumb.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the pudding as it sets with heat.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the creamed butter hold air for a lighter texture.
Baking powder
Releases gas during steaming, helping the pudding rise and swell.
Raisins
Add moisture, chew and concentrated sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Leave room in the molds. The pudding swells as it steams and rises with the baking powder. Filling molds too full can push the batter out under the lid or make the pudding dense where it cannot expand.

Swap the currant

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

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

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