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Dessert

Leicester Pudding

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Leicester Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Rub the butter into the flour until crumbly.

  2. Add the sugar, baking powder, beaten eggs, and enough milk to form a batter.

Assemble and steam

  1. Line a pudding basin with jam.

  2. Pour the mixture into the basin and cover with greased paper.

  3. Steam for 2 hours.

Serve

  1. Turn out and serve hot or cold.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the sponge as the batter sets during steaming.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add richness and structure as they set.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the pudding rise and become light.
Unsalted butter
Rubbed into the flour to tenderise the crumb and add richness.
Granulated sugar
Adds sweetness and contributes to a tender texture in the sponge.
Jam
Sweetens the base of the pudding and adds fruity flavour when turned out.

The step that matters

Steaming for 2 hours. The pudding must steam gently and steadily with the basin covered so the batter cooks through evenly. Letting the water boil dry or lifting the cover too often can leave it dense or underdone.

“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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