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Dessert

Treacle Pudding

A steamed pudding made from bread crumbs, flour, suet, ginger, treacle, baking soda, salt, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Treacle Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix the bread crumbs, flour, suet, ground ginger, baking soda, salt, and beaten eggs in a large bowl.

  2. Add the warmed treacle.

  3. Stir until the mixture reaches a porridge-like consistency.

Prepare the mold

  1. Butter the pudding mold.

  2. Line the pudding mold with parchment paper.

Steam

  1. Pour the pudding mixture into the mold.

  2. Cover the pudding with a buttered paper.

  3. Steam the pudding for about 2 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 + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  2. Flour + gingertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Bread + gingertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together565 recipes

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

  5. Bread + flourtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,383 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
Absorb liquid and give the pudding its bulk and soft body.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the pudding together as it steams.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Treacle
Provides sweetness, dark flavor, and moisture to the pudding.
Baking soda
Reacts with the treacle's acidity to lighten the pudding and help it rise.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and add structure as they set during steaming.

The step that matters

Stir until the mixture reaches a porridge-like consistency. The batter must be loose enough to fill the mold evenly but thick enough to hold its shape. Too thin and the pudding can turn heavy or leak; too stiff and it steams unevenly and stays dense.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, flour, egg. 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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