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Dessert

Steam Pudding

A steamed pudding made with butter, sugar, flour, eggs, water, baking powder, and currants.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Steam Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar.

  2. Add the flour, eggs, water, baking powder, and currants, then mix well.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

  2. Cover the mold with a lid or cloth.

  3. Steam for 2 hours until cooked through.

  4. Serve with sauce of your choice.

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 or suet
Adds fat that makes the pudding rich and tender as it steams.
Sugar
Creaming with butter traps air and adds sweetness to the pudding.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together as it sets.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set firm during steaming.
Baking powder
Releases gas that lifts the batter so the pudding is light.
Currants
Add chewy pockets of fruit sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Steaming the pudding. The mold must be sealed well and kept at a steady simmer so steam cooks the batter evenly. If the water level drops or steam escapes, the pudding can turn out dense or undercooked in the center.

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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