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Dessert

Treacle Pudding

A steamed pudding made with flour, suet, raisins, currants, treacle, and water.

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 ↓

Treacle Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. In a large bowl, mix together the flour, suet, raisins, currants, treacle, and water until well combined.

  2. Place the mixture in a cloth and tie it securely.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil the pudding in a pot of water for 4 hours.

  2. Serve the pudding with a sweet 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. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  3. Flour + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,077 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the bulk of the pudding and gives it structure as it cooks.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich in texture.
Treacle
Adds sweetness and a deep, molasses-like flavour.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness.
Currants
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness.

The step that matters

Tie the cloth securely. If the cloth is loose, water can seep into the pudding during the long boil, making it soggy and diluting its texture and flavour.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Datesfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, raisin. 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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