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Dessert

Sponge Pudding

A steamed or boiled pudding made from flour, suet, golden syrup, soda and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Sponge Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Dissolve the carbonate of soda in a little warm milk.

  2. Mix the flour and suet together.

  3. Stir in the golden syrup and add the dissolved soda.

  4. Add more milk if necessary to achieve a stiff mixture.

Steam

  1. Turn the mixture into a greased basin.

  2. Steam or boil for 2 to 3 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 + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + syruptop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,540 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Syrup + milktop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,143 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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
Forms the structure of the pudding as it cooks and sets.
Suet
Adds richness and a tender, moist crumb by melting into the batter.
Golden syrup
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the pudding brown and darken.
Carbonate of soda
Reacts with the syrup's acidity to produce gas that lightens the pudding.

The step that matters

Dissolve the carbonate of soda in warm milk. Carbonate of soda needs to be fully dissolved so it reacts evenly through the batter. Clumps can leave pockets of bitterness or uneven rising.

“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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