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Dessert

Delicate Pudding

A steamed pudding made with sugar, milk, egg, butter, raisins, baking powder, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour 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 ↓

Delicate Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the sugar, sweet milk, egg, and butter until well combined.

  2. Stir in the raisins and baking powder.

  3. Add flour gradually until the mixture reaches a cake-like consistency.

Steam

  1. Pour the batter into a greased basin.

  2. Steam for 1 hour.

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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Flour
Provides the structure that sets the batter into a cake-like crumb.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps give it structure as it cooks.
Baking powder
Releases gas during steaming so the pudding rises and becomes light.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and enriches the flavour.
Granulated sugar
Adds sweetness and helps keep the crumb soft and moist.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture and hydrates the flour to form the batter.

The step that matters

Add flour gradually until the mixture reaches a cake-like consistency. Too much flour makes the pudding dense and dry, while overmixing once the flour is in develops gluten, making the crumb tough and chewy. Stopping when the batter reaches a cake-like consistency keeps it tender.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Coconutfits less well

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