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Dessert

Steamed Fruit Pudding

A steamed pudding made with flour, suet, raisins, currants, citron, molasses, and milk or water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, mix the flour, baking soda, salt, nutmeg, and cinnamon.

  2. Add the chopped suet, raisins, currants, and citron, and mix well.

  3. Stir in the milk or cold water and molasses until combined.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered mold.

  2. Steam the pudding for 3 hours.

  3. Serve with hot 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. 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

All-purpose flour
Forms the structure that holds the pudding together as it steams.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses to help the pudding rise and lighten.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Molasses
Adds dark sweetness and moisture, and gives the pudding its color and depth.
Raisins
Add chewy sweetness and pockets of moisture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Steam the pudding for 3 hours. Steaming must be gentle and steady for the full time so the batter sets through without drying out. Low, even heat cooks the center evenly, and the pudding needs enough water in the pot to keep steaming the whole time.

Swap the currant

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

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

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