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Dessert

Jam Pudding

A steamed dough rolled with jam, served with cream, sugar, or lemon sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Jam Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Mix flour and baking powder in a bowl.

  2. Add butter and mix until well combined.

  3. Gradually add cold water to form a dough.

Fill and roll

  1. Roll the dough into a sheet and spread with jam or jelly.

  2. Roll the dough tightly like a jelly cake and pinch the ends and seam to seal.

Steam and serve

  1. Place in a well-buttered steamer and steam for 1 hour.

  2. Serve with cream and sugar or lemon 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 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

All-purpose flour
Forms the dough's structure, giving the pudding its body when steamed.
Baking powder
Releases gas during steaming, helping the pudding rise and turn light.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the dough and enriches its flavour.
Jam or jelly
Provides sweetness and fruity flavour, and moisture within the rolled layer.

The step that matters

Rolling the dough tightly and sealing the seam. A loose roll or unsealed ends let the jam leak out during steaming and leave gaps in the pudding. Tight rolling keeps the filling in a neat spiral and the seam closed.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, egg, butter, cream, sugar, sauce. 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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