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Dessert

Steamed Semolina Pudding

A steamed pudding made from semolina, milk, eggs, sugar, and flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Semolina and lemon work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Steamed Semolina Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Grease a mold or basin and a piece of kitchen paper.

Make the semolina base

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan until it simmers.

  2. Sprinkle the semolina into the milk, stirring until it boils.

  3. Add the sugar, flavoring, and salt, and simmer until it thickens slightly.

Finish and steam

  1. Separate the eggs; allow the semolina mixture to cool slightly, then beat in the yolks.

  2. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks and gently fold them into the mixture.

  3. Pour the mixture into the mold, cover with kitchen paper, and steam for 1 hour.

  4. Turn out the pudding and serve with jam or marmalade 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. Semolina + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together124 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  3. Semolina + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together351 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Semolina
Forms the thick body of the pudding as its starch swells and sets during cooking.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and bind the custard, while whipped whites lighten the texture as it steams.
Milk
Cooks with the semolina to form a soft, creamy base and adds moisture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the flavor of the milk and grain.

The step that matters

Fold in the egg whites. Whites must be beaten to stiff peaks and folded gently so the pudding keeps its airy lift. Deflating them, or folding into a mixture that is still too hot, leaves a dense result.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Coconutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against semolina, milk, egg, sugar. 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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