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Dessert

Golden Syrup Pudding

A steamed pudding made with wholemeal flour, eggs, milk, and golden syrup, baked in a basin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Golden Syrup Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the basin

  1. Grease a pudding basin with butter.

  2. Pour the golden syrup into the bottom of the basin.

Make and steam the pudding

  1. In a bowl, mix the milk, wholemeal flour, and eggs to make a batter.

  2. Pour the batter into the basin over the syrup without stirring.

  3. Cover the top with buttered paper and tie a cloth over the basin, or use a fitting metal lid.

  4. Steam the pudding in boiling water for 2½ hours, ensuring no water enters the pudding.

Serve

  1. Before serving, dip the basin in cold water for 1 minute to help release the pudding.

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

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + syruptop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,540 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Wholemeal flour
Provides the structure that sets the batter into a sponge-like pudding as it steams.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set firm during steaming.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter so it cooks through evenly.
Golden syrup
Melts into a sweet, sticky layer at the base that becomes the pudding's sauce.

The step that matters

Pouring the batter over the syrup without stirring. Stirring mixes the syrup into the batter, so the sweet layer that should form at the bottom is lost. Keeping the layers separate lets the syrup melt and sink into the base during steaming.

“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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