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Dessert

Leicester Pudding

A steamed pudding made with milk, butter, eggs, flour, cake crumbs, and caster sugar, served with jam sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Leicester Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. In a bowl, mix all the ingredients together, ensuring the eggs are well beaten to create a rich batter.

  3. Pour the batter into one large greased mold or several small molds.

Steam and finish

  1. Steam until completely set.

  2. If using a large mold, let it cool, then cut into slices.

  3. Cover the slices with egg and bread crumbs, then fry in boiling fat.

  4. Serve with jam 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. Milk + buttertop 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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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 set during steaming to give the pudding its firm structure.
Flour
Provides starch that thickens the batter and gives the set pudding body.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender, moist crumb.
Milk or cream
Supplies liquid to loosen the batter and add moisture and richness.
Caster sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown lightly when fried.

The step that matters

Steam until completely set. Eggs set when heated past their coagulation point, so the pudding must be fully firm before cooling and slicing. Undercooked batter stays loose and will crumble or break apart when cut and fried.

“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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