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Dessert

Treacle Pudding

A steamed pudding made from flour, treacle, currants, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter 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 ↓

Treacle Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Make a plain dough by mixing flour with water until smooth.

  2. Roll the dough out thinly.

Fill and wrap

  1. Spread the treacle thickly over the dough.

  2. Sprinkle currants evenly on top.

  3. Roll the dough up tightly and wrap it in a cloth.

Boil and serve

  1. Boil the wrapped pudding in water for 1 hour.

  2. Serve with melted butter drizzled on top.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + molassestop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,429 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Currant + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Molasses + curranttop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,817 recipes
  5. Flour + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,077 recipes

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

All-purpose flour
Forms the dough that wraps and holds the filling together during cooking.
Treacle
Provides the sweet, rich filling that darkens and sweetens the pudding as it cooks.
Currants
Add chewy pockets of fruit sweetness throughout the rolled filling.
Melted butter
Adds fat and richness to the finished pudding when drizzled over it.

The step that matters

Rolling the dough up tightly. A loose roll can let treacle and currants leak out or leave air gaps. A tight, even roll keeps the filling contained and the slices neat when cooked.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, molasses, butter. 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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