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Dessert

Treacle Pudding

A steamed pudding made with flour, suet, breadcrumbs, treacle, lemon rind, 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 lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 30,404 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Treacle Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pastry

  1. Mix the flour, suet, baking powder, and salt in a bowl.

  2. Add cold water to form a stiff paste.

  3. Divide the paste into two equal portions.

  4. Line a pudding basin with one portion of the paste.

  5. Roll out the second portion thinly.

  6. Cut a lid for the pudding from the rolled-out paste.

Fill and seal

  1. Layer treacle, breadcrumbs, and lemon rind in the basin.

  2. Cut a round of rolled-out paste to cover the treacle layer.

  3. Moisten the edges of the paste.

  4. Seal the edges.

  5. Repeat layering with treacle, breadcrumbs, and lemon rind.

  6. Cover with pastry.

Steam

  1. Cover the basin with greased paper.

  2. Steam for 2 to 3 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. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the main structure of the pastry that holds the filling.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pastry rich and tender as it steams.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking so the pastry rises and lightens.
Breadcrumbs
Soak up the treacle and lend body to the sweet filling.
Treacle
Provides sweetness and a dark, rich flavour for the filling.

The step that matters

Seal the edges. Moisten the edges before sealing so the paste bonds; a loose seam lets steam and syrup escape and can leave the filling dry or the pudding collapsed.

“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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