Name: Aunt Mary's Steam Pudding
Ingredients: 2 cups bread crumbs; 2 tablespoons flour; 1 egg; 1 cup sugar; 1 cup currants; 1 cup raisins; ¼ teaspoon ginger; ½ teaspoon cinnamon; milk (to moisten)

Why it works: Ginger and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Aunt Mary's Steam Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

In a bowl, combine bread crumbs, flour, sugar, currants, raisins, ginger, and cinnamon.
Add enough milk to moisten the mixture.
Stir in the egg until well combined.

Steam and serve

Transfer the mixture to a greased pudding mold.
Cover and steam for 3 hours.
Serve with hard 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.

Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,380 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,075 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,390 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,341 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together30,779 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Bread crumbs: Provides the bulk of the pudding and absorbs the milk to hold its shape.
Egg: Binds the mixture together so it sets firm after steaming.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown slightly at the edges.
Currants: Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Raisins: Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Moistening the mixture with milk. Add milk gradually, only until the crumbs are damp. Too much liquid makes the pudding soggy and loose, while too little leaves the crumbs dry and the pudding crumbly once steamed.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, flour, egg, sugar, raisin, ginger, cinnamon):

Vanillafits better
Figfits better
Lemonfits better
Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, flour, egg, sugar, raisin, ginger, cinnamon. 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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Aunt Mary's Steam Pudding