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Dessert

Leamington Pudding

A steamed pudding made with bread crumbs, flour, sugar, eggs, suet, milk, lemon juice, raisins, and lemon rind.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin 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 ↓

Leamington Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Grease a basin.

  2. Decorate the bottom with raisins.

Make the batter

  1. Mix the bread crumbs, flour, sugar, and salt in a bowl.

  2. Add the lemon juice, beaten eggs, and milk to the dry ingredients.

  3. Pour the mixture into the prepared basin.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam for 24 hours.

  2. Serve with custard or lemon 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 + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Bread crumbs
Form the bulk of the pudding and soak up the liquid.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set it as it cooks.
Suet
Melts during steaming to add richness and moisture.
Flour
Adds some structure to the crumb mixture.
Milk
Moistens the crumbs so the pudding holds together and stays moist.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharp lemon.

The step that matters

Steam for the full time at a steady heat. Gentle, moist heat sets the egg and crumb mixture evenly through the pudding. Weak or uneven heat can leave the centre wet or the texture dense.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Datesfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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