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Dessert

Lemon Pudding

A steamed pudding made with flour, suet, sugar, breadcrumbs, raisins, lemon zest, lemon juice, egg, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Lemon Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, combine flour, suet, sugar, breadcrumbs, and baking soda.

  2. Add the pitted raisins and mix thoroughly.

  3. Stir in the lemon zest and juice, then add the egg and milk, mixing well.

Steam

  1. Pour the mixture into a well-buttered bowl and cover with a buttered paper.

  2. Steam for 2 hours, ensuring the water does not reach the top of the bowl.

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. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Raisin + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Raisin + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

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

Suet
Adds richness and a moist, tender crumb as it melts during steaming.
Breadcrumbs
Provide bulk and body, soaking up the liquid to give the pudding its structure.
Egg
Binds the batter together and helps it set as it cooks.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic lemon juice to help the pudding rise and lighten.
All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that holds the pudding together.

The step that matters

Keep the water below the top of the bowl. If steam-cooking water reaches the rim, it can seep under the buttered paper and into the pudding, making it soggy and uneven. A tight cover with the water level kept lower lets steam cook it evenly over the full two hours.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Datesfits about as well

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