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Dessert

Treacle Pudding

A baked bread pudding with suet, milk, and treacle sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Treacle Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the pudding

  1. Cut the bread into small pieces and soak it in water for an hour.

  2. Drain the water and squeeze the bread until dry.

  3. In a bowl, mix the prepared bread with the beaten egg, boiling milk, sugar, and beef suet.

  4. Add nutmeg, pudding spice, or grated lemon peel to taste.

  5. Grease a tart dish with butter or lard and pour in the pudding mixture.

Bake and make the sauce

  1. Bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) for 45 minutes.

  2. For the sauce, stir corn flour mixed with cold water into boiling water.

  3. Let it boil, then sweeten with golden syrup or sugar, and add lemon juice or tartaric acid.

  4. Stir in butter just before serving.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  4. Nutmeg + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread
Soaked and squeezed bread forms the body of the pudding, giving it a soft, absorbent crumb.
Egg
Binds the mixture and helps it set as it bakes.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Corn flour
Thickens the boiling water into a smooth, glossy sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the corn flour into the boiling water. Corn flour must be mixed smoothly with cold water first, then stirred into boiling water and brought to a boil. Adding it dry or to cool liquid causes lumps, and the starch only thickens fully once it boils.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, egg, milk, sugar, beef, butter, corn):

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Pepperfits less well
  4. Parsleyfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, egg, milk, sugar, beef, butter, corn. 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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