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Dessert

Brown Pudding

A steamed pudding made from eggs, sugar, flour, butter, baking soda, and raspberry jam.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Brown Pudding

Why it works: Flour and butter 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 ↓

Brown Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a mixing bowl, beat the eggs until frothy.

  2. Add the sugar, flour, butter, baking soda, and raspberry jam. Mix until well combined.

  3. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam the pudding for 2 hours.

  2. Serve warm with cream 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + buttertop 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. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + raspberrytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,308 recipes

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

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter 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

Eggs
Beaten eggs add structure and moisture, helping the pudding set as it cooks.
All-purpose flour
Flour provides the starch structure that holds the pudding together.
Unsalted butter
Butter adds fat, which gives the pudding a tender, rich texture.
Sugar
Sugar adds sweetness and helps keep the pudding moist and tender.
Baking soda
Baking soda reacts with the acidity in the batter to produce gas that lightens the crumb.
Raspberry jam
Jam adds fruity sweetness, moisture, and acidity to the batter.

The step that matters

Steam the pudding for 2 hours. Steam is moist, even heat that cooks the batter gently without drying it out. A long steam needs steady, not boiling-dry, water so the pudding cooks through evenly across the full time.

Swap the raspberry

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

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

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