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Dessert

Nursery Pudding

A steamed pudding made with wheatmeal, raisins, golden syrup, butter, eggs, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Nursery Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the wheatmeal, salt, vegetable butter, and sultana raisins lightly together.

  2. Add the golden syrup, beaten egg yolks, and milk; mix again.

  3. Gently fold in the whisked egg whites.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a fancy mold and steam for 3 hours.

  2. Carefully turn out the pudding and serve with 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Raisin + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Raisin + syruptop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together336 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  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

Allinson fine wheatmeal
Provides the main structure of the pudding as it steams.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the batter together.
Egg whites
Whisked to a firm froth, they lighten the batter and help it rise.
Vegetable butter
Adds fat for a tender, moist texture.
Sultana raisins
Add chewy pockets of sweetness throughout the pudding.
Golden syrup
Adds sweetness and a rich, caramel-like flavour.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whisked egg whites hold air that gives the pudding its lightness. Folding gently, rather than stirring, keeps that air in the batter so the pudding does not turn dense.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

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