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Dessert

Alma Pudding

A sweet pudding made with butter, sugar, flour, currants, and eggs, baked in a water bath.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Alma Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the butter until creamy.

  2. Gradually add the sugar and beat well.

  3. Dredge in the flour gradually.

  4. Add the currants and mix well.

  5. Beat the eggs and add them to the mixture.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour into a buttered mold and cover with a cloth.

  2. Place the pudding in a saucepan with boiling water and boil for 4 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Butter
Creams with the sugar to trap air and give the pudding a rich, tender body.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps the butter hold air when beaten.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together as it cooks.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and add structure and richness as they set.
Currants
Add chewy pockets of fruit sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Boil for 4 hours in a saucepan of boiling water. The pudding must stay submerged in steadily boiling water for the full time, because steam and gentle heat cook the batter through evenly. If the water level drops or the boil weakens, the pudding can cook unevenly and turn out dense or undercooked in the centre.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, flour, 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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