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Dessert

Golden Pudding

A steamed pudding made with flour, breadcrumbs, lemon, suet, eggs, and golden syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Golden Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour, breadcrumbs, grated lemon rind, lemon juice, suet, golden syrup, and eggs.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a greased pudding mold.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam for 2 hours.

  2. Serve with hot golden syrup poured around.

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + syruptop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,235 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the pudding together as it cooks.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set firm during steaming.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb moisture and give the pudding a light, crumbly body.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender as it steams.
Golden syrup
Adds sweetness and a rich flavour, and moistens the mixture.

The step that matters

Steam for 2 hours. Steaming must be gentle and continuous so the pudding cooks through and sets evenly. If the water boils dry or the steam drops, the pudding can turn dense or undercooked in the centre.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, egg, syrup. 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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