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Dessert

Albert Pudding

A steamed pudding made with butter, eggs, sugar, flour, bread crumbs, and sultana raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Albert Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the butter into a cream.

  2. Stir in the yolks of the eggs.

  3. Gradually add the sugar, flour, bread crumbs, and sultana raisins.

  4. Whisk the egg whites and fold them into the mixture.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour into a buttered mold, cover with oiled paper and a cloth, and steam for 3 hours.

  2. Serve with wine 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Eggs
Yolks enrich the batter and whipped whites lighten the pudding as it steams.
Butter
Creamed with the sugar, it adds richness and a tender crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together after steaming.
Bread crumbs
Add body and absorb moisture, giving the pudding a soft, light texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps cream the butter into a smooth base.
Sultana raisins
Add chewy pockets of fruit sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites must be whisked to soft peaks and folded gently so the air is kept in the batter. Overmixing deflates them, and the steamed pudding becomes denser and heavier.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Raisinthe original
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Datesfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, sugar, flour, bread. 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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