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Dessert

Steamed Lemon Pudding

A steamed pudding made with bread crumbs, suet, flour, lemon rind and juice, sugar, egg, baking powder, and milk or water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Steamed Lemon Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix the dry ingredients in a bowl.

  2. Add the lemon rind and juice, egg, and enough milk or water to form a stiff batter.

Steam

  1. Pour the batter into a greased pudding mold.

  2. Steam for three 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 + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Bread + eggtop 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. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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

Bread crumbs
Provides bulk and a soft, crumbly body to the pudding.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender as it steams.
Flour
Gives structure so the batter sets into a firm, sliceable pudding.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps it set firm during steaming.
Baking powder
Releases gas that lifts the batter, giving a lighter texture.
Lemon
Adds acidity and bright citrus aroma that balance the sweetness.

The step that matters

Form a stiff batter. A stiff batter holds its shape as it steams. A thin batter can turn dense or soggy and may sink or spread unevenly in the mold.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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