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Dessert

Snowdon Pudding

A steamed pudding made with raisins, suet, breadcrumbs, flour, ground rice, marmalade, lemon rind, sugar, eggs, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Snowdon Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the basin

  1. Grease a pudding basin and decorate the bottom with some halved raisins, cut side down.

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, sift the flour and add the chopped suet, breadcrumbs, ground rice, sugar, lemon rind, and remaining raisins.

  2. In another bowl, beat the eggs, then mix in the milk and marmalade.

  3. Combine the wet ingredients with the dry ingredients, mixing well.

Steam

  1. Pour the mixture into the prepared basin, cover with greased paper, and steam for 3 to 4 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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  3. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

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

  4. Raisin + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together565 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during steaming.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb moisture and give the pudding body and a soft texture.
Suet
Adds richness and fat that keeps the steamed pudding moist.
Flour
Provides structure as the batter sets.
Marmalade
Adds sweetness and a bitter citrus note.

The step that matters

Steaming the pudding. Steaming must be gentle and steady over the full 3 to 4 hours so the batter cooks through and stays moist. Letting the water boil dry or drop in temperature can leave the pudding heavy or uneven.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, flour, rice, 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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