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Dessert

Treacle Pudding

A steamed pudding made with flour, suet, treacle, ginger, breadcrumbs, baking powder, egg, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Treacle Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the batter

  1. Mix all the dry ingredients together.

  2. Add the egg and treacle, then mix thoroughly.

  3. Pour the mixture into a well-buttered mold.

Steam

  1. Steam for 2 to 2½ 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. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  2. Flour + gingertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Ginger + breadtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together565 recipes

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

  5. Flour + breadtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,383 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
Provides the main structure that holds the pudding together as it cooks.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and gives it a tender, rich texture.
Treacle
Adds sweetness, moisture and a dark, rich flavour to the pudding.
Bread crumbs
Add body and soak up moisture, giving a softer, lighter crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, helping the pudding rise and become light.
Egg
Binds the mixture and helps set the structure as it cooks.

The step that matters

Steaming. The mold must be tightly covered and the water kept at a steady simmer for the full time. Steam that drops or escapes leaves the pudding dense, soggy, or unevenly cooked, since the gentle, moist heat sets the batter slowly and evenly.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

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