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Dessert

Royal Steamed Pudding

A steamed pudding made with butter, sugar, eggs, flour, lemon, almonds, citron, and raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin 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 ↓

Royal Steamed Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  3. Gradually add the flour in five portions.

Add the fruit and steam

  1. Cut the citron into fine shreds and mix with the almonds and raisins, dusting them with flour.

  2. Fold the fruit mixture into the batter.

  3. Steam in buttered molds for about three hours.

  4. Serve with a suitable 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Almond + raisintop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  3. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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 tender, rich crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and, creamed with butter, helps create a light structure.
Eggs
Add structure and richness as they set during steaming.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the pudding as it sets.
Almonds
Add nutty flavor and a bit of texture to the batter.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy moisture to the pudding.

The step that matters

Adding the flour in portions. Adding flour gradually while mixing keeps the batter smooth and prevents lumps. Adding it all at once can deflate the aerated butter and sugar mixture and make the pudding heavy.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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