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Dessert

Essex Pudding

A steamed pudding made with butter, sugar, flour, eggs, milk, baking powder, vanilla, and jam.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Essex Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add one egg and a little flour, then beat well for a few minutes.

  3. Add the second egg and more flour, mixing in enough milk to create a smooth, creamy batter that is rather thin.

  4. Carefully mix the baking powder and vanilla into the batter.

Steam and serve

  1. Butter a mold, add some jam, and pour the batter over it.

  2. Cover with buttered paper and steam for 2 hours.

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during steaming.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the crumb.
Flour
Forms the structure of the pudding as it cooks.
Baking powder
Releases gas that lifts the batter so the pudding rises.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps tenderize the crumb.

The step that matters

Adding the baking powder and vanilla. Baking powder starts releasing gas as soon as it is wet, so the batter should be mixed gently and moved to the steamer promptly to keep the rise lively rather than letting it deflate.

Swap the vanilla

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

  1. Vanillathe original
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Coconutfits less well

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