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Dessert

Treacle Sponge Pudding

A steamed pudding made with flour, suet, egg, milk, baking powder, and golden syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Treacle Sponge Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix the flour and suet in a bowl.

  2. Heat the golden syrup and gradually mix it into the flour and suet.

  3. Add the milk, beaten egg, and baking powder, and mix well.

Boil the pudding

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered basin.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + syruptop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,540 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. Milk + syruptop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,143 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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
Provides the structure that holds the sponge together as it cooks.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding tender and moist.
Golden syrup
Adds sweetness, moisture and the characteristic treacle flavour.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps give the sponge its set structure.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking, helping the pudding rise and become light.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter so it mixes evenly.

The step that matters

Mixing in the syrup gradually. Adding the golden syrup a little at a time helps it blend evenly into the flour and suet, so the batter cooks with an even texture and sweetness rather than streaks of syrup.

“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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