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Dessert

Seven Cup Pudding

A steamed pudding made with flour, baking powder, suet, bread crumbs, raisins, jam, sugar, and milk.

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

Seven Cup Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the batter

  1. Mix all the dry ingredients together in a bowl.

  2. Add the raspberry jam and milk, then beat thoroughly.

Steam

  1. Pour the mixture into a well‑greased basin.

  2. Steam for 2 hours.

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. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Raspberry + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,014 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that sets as the pudding cooks and steams.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking so the pudding rises and stays light.
Suet
Adds fat that melts during steaming, keeping the pudding moist and tender.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the milk and jam, adding body and helping hold the pudding together.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps keep the crumb soft.
Raspberry jam
Adds sweetness, fruity flavour and moisture.

The step that matters

Beat the batter thoroughly after adding the jam and milk. Thorough beating evenly blends the wet and dry ingredients, so the baking powder lifts the pudding uniformly and no dry pockets of flour remain.

Swap the raspberry

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Datesfits better
  4. Raspberrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, bread, raisin, sugar, milk. 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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