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Dessert

Steamed Pudding

A steamed pudding made with butter, sugar, walnuts, raisins, flour, milk, egg, spices, salt, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour 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 ↓

Steamed Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix melted butter and sugar until combined.

  2. Add chopped walnuts, raisins, flour, milk, egg, cinnamon, nutmeg, salt, and baking powder, then stir until smooth.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

  2. Steam for 3 hours.

  3. Serve with any sauce or whipped cream.

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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Walnut + cinnamontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  5. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the pudding together as it cooks.
Baking powder
Releases gas during steaming, helping the pudding rise and become light.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps set the pudding's texture as it cooks.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, giving the pudding a tender crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and adds moisture to the batter.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and adds moisture for a soft, tender texture.

The step that matters

Steam for 3 hours. Steam must be kept steady and water topped up throughout. Uneven or weak steam lets the pudding cook unevenly and turn heavy or gummy, since the batter sets gradually with gentle, continuous heat.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, raisin, flour, milk, egg, 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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