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Dessert

Marmalade Pudding

A steamed pudding made with breadcrumbs, suet, flour, candied peel, lemon rind, egg, marmalade, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Marmalade Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the suet and candied peel, and grate the lemon rind onto the breadcrumbs.

  2. In a bowl, mix all the dry ingredients.

  3. In another bowl, beat the egg well.

Mix and steam

  1. Add the marmalade to the beaten egg and stir into the dry ingredients.

  2. If the mixture is too stiff, add extra marmalade.

  3. Pour the mixture into a well-greased basin and steam for two hours or longer.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

Breadcrumbs
Provide the bulk of the pudding and absorb moisture to form a soft crumb.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender as it steams.
Egg
Binds the ingredients together and helps set the pudding structure.
Baking powder
Releases gas during steaming so the pudding rises and stays light.
Marmalade
Adds sweetness and a bright citrus flavour while moistening the mixture.

The step that matters

Pour the mixture into a well-greased basin and steam for two hours or longer. Steaming gently cooks the pudding through without drying it, and the long, steady heat sets the egg and starch so the crumb holds together. Greasing the basin keeps the pudding from sticking when turned out.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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