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Dessert

Leicester Pudding

A steamed pudding made with flour, suet, raspberry jam, sugar, milk, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Raspberry and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,014 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Leicester Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, combine the flour and chopped suet.

  2. Add the raspberry jam, sugar, and milk to the mixture.

  3. Stir in the baking soda until well combined.

  4. Pour the mixture into a well-greased basin.

Steam and serve

  1. Cover the basin with paper and steam for 2 hours.

  2. Serve with custard or arrowroot 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. Raspberry + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,014 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Flour + raspberrytop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,262 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Flour
Forms the structure of the pudding as it sets during steaming.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender as it steams.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic jam and milk to produce gas that lightens the pudding.
Raspberry jam
Adds sweetness, fruit flavour and moisture to the batter.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and a rich, caramel-like flavour while helping keep the pudding moist.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and combines with the baking soda to help the batter rise.

The step that matters

Stir in the baking soda until well combined. Baking soda needs an acid to react and release gas, so it must be evenly mixed through the batter; uneven mixing leaves pockets of bitterness and dense spots where the pudding fails to rise.

Swap the raspberry

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Raspberrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, 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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