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Dessert

Steamed Lemon Pudding

A steamed pudding made with bread crumbs, flour, sugar, suet, lemon rind and juice, egg, and milk or water.

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 ↓

Steamed Lemon Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix the bread crumbs, flour, sugar, baking powder, and suet in a bowl.

  2. Add the lemon rind, lemon juice, egg, and enough milk or water to form a stiff batter.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

  2. Steam for three 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. 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. Flour + milktop 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. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 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

Bread crumbs
Provide the bulk of the pudding and soak up moisture to give a soft, tender crumb.
Flour
Adds structure so the batter holds its shape as it steams.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Egg
Binds the batter together and adds structure as it sets.
Baking powder
Releases gas that helps the pudding rise and lighten.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and flavour of the pudding.

The step that matters

Steam for three hours. Steaming must stay gentle and steady so the pudding cooks through evenly without drying out. If the water boils dry or the steam drops, the pudding can turn dense or undercooked in the centre.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, 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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