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Dessert

Treacle Pudding

A steamed pudding made from flour, suet, water, and treacle, topped with boiling treacle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and ginger are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,564 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Treacle Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the paste

  1. In a bowl, combine flour, shredded beef suet, and water to form a stiff paste.

  2. Roll out the paste to about ½ inch thick on a floured surface.

Assemble the pudding

  1. Butter a 1½ pint pudding basin and line it with part of the paste.

  2. Cut the remaining paste into rounds to fit on top of each other.

  3. Layer the paste in the basin, masking each layer with treacle until full.

Steam and serve

  1. Cover with a cloth and place in a saucepan of boiling water or a steamer.

  2. Cook for 1.5 hours.

  3. Turn out the pudding, pour over 1 lb. of boiling treacle, and serve hot.

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 + gingertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Beef + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,410 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Flour + beeftop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and beef barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,677 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
Forms the stiff paste that gives the pudding its structure.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the pastry rich and moist during steaming.
Treacle
Adds sweetness and flavour, and moistens the layers as it soaks into the paste.

The step that matters

Layering the paste with treacle. Each layer must be evenly coated and the basin filled without gaps, so the pudding holds its shape when turned out and cooks through evenly during steaming.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Jalapenofits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, beef. 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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