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West-Riding Pudding

A custard-like pudding baked in puff pastry with jam and lemon rind.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

West-Riding Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Line a pie dish with puff pastry.

  2. Cover the bottom with jam.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the butter into a cream.

  2. Stir in the flour, sugar, and beaten eggs.

  3. Add the baking powder and lemon rind.

Bake

  1. Pour in the mixture.

  2. Bake for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 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
Provide structure and richness as they set, binding the sponge-like batter.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, contributing to a tender crumb.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the batter brown in the oven.
Flour
Forms the bulk of the batter and sets as it bakes, giving the pudding its body.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the pudding rise and lighten.

The step that matters

Beat the butter into a cream. Beating butter with sugar-free creaming traps air in the fat, which gives the batter lift. Butter that is cold or not beaten well leaves a dense, heavy pudding.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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