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Dessert

Syrup Sponge Pudding

A steamed pudding made with flour, suet, ginger, syrup, milk, and egg, served with golden syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Syrup Sponge Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Sift the flour and salt into a bowl.

  2. Mix in the chopped suet, bicarbonate of soda, and ground ginger.

  3. In a separate bowl, beat the egg, then add the milk and syrup.

  4. Stir the liquid mixture into the dry ingredients until combined.

Steam and serve

  1. Grease a pudding bowl and pour in the mixture, filling it two-thirds full.

  2. Cover with greased paper.

  3. Place the pudding bowl in a pot with boiling water, ensuring the water comes halfway up the bowl.

  4. Steam for 2 hours until firm to the touch.

  5. Turn the pudding out onto a hot dish and serve with warm golden syrup flavored with a few drops of lemon juice.

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 + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Ginger + syruptop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together950 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Flour + syruptop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,540 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 main structure of the sponge as its starch sets during steaming.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure and richness to the crumb.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the sponge moist and tender as it steams.
Bicarbonate of soda
Reacts with the syrup's acidity to produce gas that lightens the sponge.
Syrup
Adds sweetness, moisture and a deep golden colour to the sponge.

The step that matters

Steam for 2 hours until firm to the touch. Steaming gently and fully cooks the batter through without drying it. Lifting the lid or letting the water boil dry can leave the sponge undercooked in the centre or dense at the edges.

Swap the ginger

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, syrup, 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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