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Dessert

Marmalade Pudding

A steamed pudding made from bread crumbs, marmalade, suet, sugar, baking soda, and butter‑milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Marmalade Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Grate the bread and place it in a bowl.

  2. Add the suet and sugar, and mix well.

  3. Incorporate the baking soda, ensuring there are no lumps.

  4. Stir in the marmalade and enough butter-milk to moisten the mixture without making it too wet.

Steam and serve

  1. Grease a basin or mold and fill it with the pudding mixture.

  2. Cover with greased paper and steam for 2.5 hours.

  3. Turn out the pudding and serve with sweet sauce flavored with additional marmalade.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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
Provides the bulk and structure that holds the pudding together.
Marmalade
Adds sweetness, acidity and flavour to the pudding and its sauce.
Suet
Adds fat, which keeps the steamed pudding moist and tender.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic marmalade to produce gas that lightens the pudding.
Butter-milk
Moistens the crumbs and adds mild acidity to activate the baking soda.

The step that matters

Incorporate the baking soda, ensuring there are no lumps. Baking soda must be evenly dispersed, or pockets of it react unevenly, leaving bitter, soapy patches and uneven rising in the steamed pudding.

“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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