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Dessert

Yankee Pudding

A steamed pudding made with flour, sugar, bread crumbs, marmalade, baking soda, milk, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Yankee Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Mix the flour, sugar, and bread crumbs together, then stir in the marmalade.

  2. Warm the milk slightly and dissolve the baking soda in it.

  3. Beat the egg and mix it with the dry ingredients.

  4. Beat for a few minutes.

  5. Pour into a buttered basin.

Steam and serve

  1. Tie a cloth over the basin and plunge it into boiling water.

  2. Boil for one hour.

  3. Serve hot or cold, with a spoonful of marmalade on top.

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during cooking.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the pudding as it cooks.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic marmalade to produce gas that helps the pudding rise.
Bread crumbs
Add body and absorb moisture to give the pudding a tender texture.
Marmalade
Adds sweetness and a tangy, acidic flavour to the pudding.

The step that matters

Boil for one hour. The pudding cooks by gentle steam in the basin, so the water must stay boiling and be topped up. If it drops, the pudding can cook unevenly and turn heavy and dense.

“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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