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Dessert

Alma Pudding

A steamed pudding made with flour, sugar, butter, eggs, currants, sultanas, baking powder, and lemon rind.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Alma Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean and pick the currants and sultanas.

  2. Cream the butter and sugar together until thick and white.

  3. Beat in the eggs, then add the flour, baking powder, lemon rind, currants, and sultanas.

  4. Prepare a well-buttered mold or basin and pour in the mixture.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam for 2 hours.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air, giving the pudding a light, tender crumb and rich flavour.
Eggs
Bind the batter and set during steaming, adding structure and richness.
All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure of the pudding as its starch sets during cooking.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the pudding rise and become lighter.
Castor sugar
Creams with the butter to aerate the batter and adds sweetness.

The step that matters

Creaming the butter and sugar. Beating until thick and white traps air in the fat, which expands and helps the pudding rise and stay light. Under-creaming leaves a dense result.

Swap the currant

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

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

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