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Dessert

Currant Sponge Pudding

A steamed sponge pudding made with margarine, bread crumbs, sugar, egg, milk, currants, mixed peel, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Currant Sponge Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix the warmed margarine, bread crumbs, sugar, egg, and hot milk in a bowl.

  2. Grease a basin and cover the bottom thickly with currants and chopped mixed peel.

Steam

  1. Add the baking powder quickly just before pouring the mixture into the basin.

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Milk + curranttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Bread + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,398 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Form the soft body of the sponge, absorbing the milk and butter-like fat to set the crumb.
Egg
Binds the mixture and helps give the sponge its set structure as it cooks.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated and wet, lifting the pudding so it rises and becomes light.
Margarine
Adds fat, which softens the crumb and gives a richer, tender texture.
Currants
Provide sweetness and concentrated fruit flavour in the base of the pudding.

The step that matters

Add the baking powder quickly just before pouring the mixture into the basin. Baking powder starts releasing gas as soon as it meets liquid, so delaying the mixing or pouring lets bubbles escape and the pudding rises less well.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, 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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