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Dessert

Steamed Fruit Pudding

A steamed pudding made with sour milk, sugar, butter, baking soda, salt, flour, and fruit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Steamed Fruit Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix sour milk, sugar, butter, baking soda, and salt.

  2. Add flour gradually until the batter is stiff like cake.

  3. Fold in your choice of fruit, dredging it with flour first.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered mold.

  2. Steam the pudding for 1 hour.

  3. Serve with wine 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Butter and flour 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

Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with baking soda to produce gas that lightens the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in sour milk to make the pudding rise.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavor.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps browning and a soft texture.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the stiff batter as it steams.
Fruit
Adds moisture and fruit flavor throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Dredging the fruit with flour first. Flour-coated fruit is less likely to sink to the bottom of the batter, so the fruit stays spread evenly through the pudding as it steams and sets.

“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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