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Dessert

Newcastle Pudding

A steamed pudding made from rice flour, sugar, eggs, butter, baking soda, and almond essence.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Newcastle Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Combine rice flour, sugar, eggs, and baking soda in a bowl.

  2. Beat until very light and white.

  3. Cream butter and add it along with almond essence.

  4. Beat for an additional 5 minutes.

Steam the pudding

  1. Butter a mold.

  2. Pour in the pudding mixture.

  3. Steam or boil 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. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Rice + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Flour and butter 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
Trap air when beaten, giving the pudding its light, airy structure.
Rice flour
Provides the body of the pudding, setting into a soft, tender crumb when steamed.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender, smooth texture to the batter.
Baking soda
Helps the batter rise and lighten as it cooks.

The step that matters

Beating the eggs and sugar until very light and white. Beating incorporates air into the eggs, which gives the pudding its lightness. Under-beating leaves a dense result, while the air bubbles must be kept in the batter when the rest is folded in.

“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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