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Dessert

Raspberry Puff-ball Pudding

A steamed pudding made with flour, suet, raspberry jam, sugar, egg, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Raspberry and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,014 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Raspberry Puff-ball Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Mix the flour, baking powder, suet, and sugar together.

  2. Add the raspberry jam, egg, and enough milk to make the mixture moist.

  3. Beat well and pour into a well-greased basin.

Steam

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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
Forms the main structure of the batter as its proteins set during cooking.
Baking powder
Releases gas as it reacts with moisture and heat, lifting the batter to make it light.
Suet
Adds richness and fat that keeps the pudding tender and moist.
Raspberry jam
Adds sweetness, fruit flavour and moisture to the batter.
Egg
Binds the ingredients together and helps give the pudding its set structure.

The step that matters

Beat well and pour into a well-greased basin. Thorough beating combines the ingredients evenly and helps trap air for a lighter texture. A well-greased basin keeps the pudding from sticking when it is turned out after steaming.

Swap the raspberry

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, egg, 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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