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Dessert

Steamed Brown Pudding

A steamed pudding made with suet or butter, sour milk, molasses, eggs, raisins, flour, and baking soda.

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 ↓

Steamed Brown Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, mix the suet or butter, sour milk, molasses, eggs, raisins, flour, and baking soda until well combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

Steam

  1. Steam the pudding for three hours until cooked through.

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. Butter + milktop 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. Molasses + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  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

Suet or butter
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender as it steams.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with baking soda to lift the batter.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark colour and a rich, moist texture.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during steaming.
All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure that sets as the pudding cooks.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk to produce gas that helps the pudding rise.

The step that matters

Steam the pudding for three hours until cooked through. Steaming must stay gentle and steady, with water kept topped up, so the pudding cooks evenly through without drying out or turning heavy and wet in the centre.

“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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