Skip to main content
Dessert

Jam Pudding

A steamed pudding made with jam, sugar, butter, flour, baking powder, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Jam Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Sift together the flour and baking powder.

  2. Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

Make the batter

  1. Add the jam, flour, and enough milk to achieve a light cake batter consistency.

  2. Pour the mixture into a greased basin.

Steam and serve

  1. Cover with greased paper and steam for 1½ hours.

  2. Serve with jam 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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together as it cooks.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, making the pudding light and rise.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and carries richness.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps it brown slightly and stay tender.
Milk
Supplies moisture and loosens the batter to a light cake consistency.
Jam
Adds sweetness, fruit flavour and moisture to the pudding.

The step that matters

Adding enough milk to reach a light cake batter consistency. Too little milk leaves the batter stiff, giving a dense pudding, while too much makes it runny and heavy. Flour hydrates as it mixes, so the batter should pour easily but still hold its shape.

“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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes