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Dessert

Biscuit Pudding

A steamed pudding made from Huntley biscuits, milk, sugar, eggs, lemon peel, and optional sherry sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Biscuit and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 697 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Biscuit Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Soak the biscuits in the milk until soft.

  2. Beat the soaked biscuits until smooth.

  3. Add sugar, eggs, lemon peel, and salt; mix well.

  4. Transfer the mixture to a buttered basin, cover with paper, and steam for 1 hour.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, boil sugar in water until it thickens.

  2. Add lemon juice and boil for 5 more minutes.

  3. If desired, stir in sherry before serving.

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. Biscuit + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together697 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Milk + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,479 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  4. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  5. Biscuit + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together197 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Biscuits
Provide the bulk of the pudding, softening into a soft, cake-like body when soaked.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set during steaming to give the pudding structure.
Milk
Softens the biscuits and adds moisture so the pudding stays tender.
Lump sugar
Sweetens the pudding and, when boiled in water, thickens into the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet sauce.

The step that matters

Steaming the pudding. Steam gently and keep the basin covered so the eggs set evenly without drying the surface. Too much heat can make the custard-like mixture curdle or turn rubbery.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (biscuit, milk, sugar, egg, sauce, sherry):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against biscuit, milk, sugar, egg, sauce, sherry. 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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