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Dessert

Canary Pudding

A steamed custard-like pudding made with eggs, butter, sugar, flour, baking powder, milk, and lemon rind.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Canary Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Thickly butter a mold.

Make the batter

  1. Cream together the butter and sugar.

  2. Add the well-beaten eggs and mix well.

  3. Stir in the flour, baking powder, milk, and lemon rind.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into the mold and cover with buttered paper.

  2. Steam for 2 hours.

  3. Serve hot with fruit sauce.

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

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 and richness as they set during steaming.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness, and creams with sugar to trap air for a lighter crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps the creamed butter hold air for a softer texture.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the pudding as it cooks.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking so the pudding rises and stays light.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour, baking powder, milk, and lemon rind. Mixing too vigorously after adding flour develops gluten and can make the pudding tough. Stir just until combined so the baking powder keeps its lift.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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