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Dessert

Sponge Pudding

A steamed pudding made with butter or suet, molasses, wine, sweet milk, flour, baking soda, raisins, spices, and optional dried cherries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin 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 ↓

Sponge Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, cream together the butter (or suet) and molasses.

  2. Add the wine and sweet milk, mixing well.

  3. In another bowl, combine the flour and baking soda.

  4. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, stirring until smooth.

  5. Fold in the raisins and spices (or dried cherries if using).

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the batter into a greased pudding mold.

  2. Steam for 2 hours.

  3. Serve hot with 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 + raisintop 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. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

Butter or suet
Adds fat that gives the pudding a rich, tender crumb.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color and moisture to the batter.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together as it steams.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidity in the batter to produce gas that helps it rise.
Wine
Adds liquid and acidity that interacts with the baking soda.

The step that matters

Stirring the dry ingredients into the wet mixture. Adding the flour gradually and stirring until smooth prevents lumps and overmixing. Overworking flour develops gluten, which can make the pudding tough and dense.

Swap the raisin

The recipe marks raisin as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, molasses, wine, milk, flour):

  1. Raisinthe original
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Applefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, molasses, wine, milk, flour. 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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