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Dessert

Treacle Pudding

A steamed pudding made with flour, suet, treacle, ginger, soda, milk, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Treacle Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the skin from the suet, then shred and chop it finely.

  2. Mix the suet with the flour, then sprinkle in the ginger, soda, and salt.

  3. Add the treacle and enough milk to make a stiff batter.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased basin and cover with greased paper.

  2. Steam for two hours.

  3. Turn out onto a hot dish and serve with sweet sauce.

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. Ginger + milktop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,519 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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
Provides the main structure that holds the pudding together as it steams.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding tender and moist during steaming.
Treacle
Adds sweetness, dark colour and a moist, rich texture.
Carbonate of soda
Reacts with the treacle's acidity to give the pudding lift.

The step that matters

Steam for two hours. The pudding must steam gently and continuously for the full time. Steam that drops or water that boils away lets the batter set unevenly and turn heavy and dense.

Swap the ginger

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, 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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