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Dessert

Golden Pudding

A steamed pudding made with eggs, flour, lemon flavoring, milk, baking powder, and golden syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Golden Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Beat the eggs thoroughly.

  2. Add the flour, lemon flavoring, and enough milk to make a stiff batter.

  3. Stir in the baking powder.

Steam the pudding

  1. Grease a mold and add the golden syrup.

  2. Pour the batter into the mold and steam for 1 hour.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + syruptop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,540 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during steaming.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the pudding together once cooked.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the pudding rise and become light.
Golden syrup
Adds sweetness and a rich flavor that soaks into the pudding as it steams.

The step that matters

Pour the batter over the syrup and steam without lifting the lid. Lifting the lid lets steam escape and cools the mold, which can make the pudding sink or turn heavy. Steady, gentle steam cooks the batter evenly so it rises and sets.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, flour, milk, syrup):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, flour, milk, syrup. 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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