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Dessert

Delicate Pudding

A steamed pudding made with sugar, sweet milk, egg, butter, raisins, baking powder, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour 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 ↓

Delicate Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine sugar, sweet milk, and egg.

  2. Add butter and mix well.

  3. Stir in raisins and baking powder.

  4. Gradually add flour until the batter is stiff.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

  2. Steam for one hour.

  3. Optionally, use canned cherries or fruit with the syrup strained off.

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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure as it sets.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender texture to the pudding.
Baking powder
Releases gas that helps the pudding rise and become light.
Flour
Builds the stiff batter that holds the pudding's shape.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps it brown slightly.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout.

The step that matters

Gradually add flour until the batter is stiff. Adding flour in stages lets you judge the batter's consistency. Too much flour makes the pudding dense and dry, while too little leaves it loose and heavy after steaming.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Coconutfits less well

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

More raisin pudding recipes

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