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Dessert

Treacle Pudding

A steamed pudding made with flour, suet, breadcrumbs, treacle, lemon rind, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 30,404 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Treacle Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pastry

  1. Mix the flour, suet, baking powder, and a pinch of salt together.

  2. Form into a stiff paste with cold water.

  3. Divide the paste into two equal portions.

  4. Line a basin with one portion and roll out the other thinly for the lid.

Assemble the pudding

  1. Add a layer of treacle to the basin, sprinkle with breadcrumbs and lemon rind.

  2. Cut a round from the rolled‑out paste to cover the treacle, moisten edges with water, and seal it to the lining.

  3. Add another layer of treacle, breadcrumbs, and lemon rind, and cover with pastry again.

  4. Repeat until the basin is full, then cover with greased paper.

Steam

  1. Steam for about 2.5 hours.

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 + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the paste structure that holds the pudding together while it steams.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pastry tender and moist as it cooks.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking so the pastry rises and stays light.
Treacle
Provides sweetness and a rich, dark flavour that soaks into the sponge-like layers.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb some of the treacle, adding texture and keeping the filling from becoming soggy.

The step that matters

Seal the pastry lid to the lining. Moistened edges must fully join the lining so steam cannot escape and the treacle stays inside. A poor seal lets the filling leak and the pudding dry out.

“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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