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Dessert

Golden Syrup Pudding

A steamed pudding made with wheatmeal, eggs, milk, and golden syrup, optionally flavored with lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Golden Syrup Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pudding

  1. In a bowl, mix the fine wheatmeal, eggs, and milk to make a batter.

  2. Grease a pudding basin with butter.

  3. Pour the golden syrup into the bottom of the basin, then add the batter without mixing.

  4. If desired, add lemon juice to the syrup and grated lemon rind to the batter.

  5. Cover the batter with a piece of buttered paper and tie it with a cloth.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam the pudding in boiling water for 24 hours, ensuring no water enters the basin.

  2. Before turning out the pudding, dip the basin in cold water for 1 minute.

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. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Fine wheatmeal
Provides the main structure and body of the batter as it cooks.
Eggs
Bind the batter and set as it steams, giving the pudding a firm yet tender crumb.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter so it cooks to a soft texture.
Golden syrup
Adds sweetness and moisture, and melts into a rich sauce beneath the pudding.

The step that matters

Keep water out of the basin while steaming. Water entering the basin dilutes the golden syrup and makes the pudding soggy. A steady steam keeps the eggs and flour setting evenly over the long cooking time.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, milk, syrup, butter):

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

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