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Roly-poly Pudding

A steamed suet and flour pudding layered with jam.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Roly-poly Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Combine flour, suet, salt, sugar, and baking powder in a bowl. Mix well.

  2. Add enough butter milk or water to form a stiff paste.

  3. Turn the mixture onto a floured surface and roll it into a thin sheet.

Assemble the pudding

  1. Grease a pudding bowl with dripping.

  2. Line the bowl with the paste, cutting the edges evenly.

  3. Place a spoonful of jam at the bottom. Cover the jam with more paste.

  4. Repeat layering jam and paste until the bowl is full, finishing with a piece of paste on top.

  5. Wet the edges to help it adhere.

  6. Cover with buttered paper.

Steam and serve

  1. Place the bowl in a pot with ½ inch of boiling water, cover tightly, and steam for 2 hours.

  2. Carefully turn out the pudding when done.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the paste that encloses the jam.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the paste tender and rich as it steams.
Baking powder
Releases gas that helps the paste rise and lighten.
Jam
Provides sweetness and fruity flavor that soaks into the paste as it steams.

The step that matters

Wet the edges before covering. Moistening the paste edges helps the layers seal together, so the jam stays enclosed and the pudding holds its shape during steaming rather than leaking or collapsing.

“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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