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Honiton Sponge Pudding

A sponge pudding made with eggs, butter, flour, sugar, lemon rind, and sultanas, boiled in a mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour 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 ↓

Honiton Sponge Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Cream the butter in a bowl.

  2. Beat the eggs in a separate bowl.

  3. Mix the creamed butter, beaten eggs, and sugar together.

  4. Stir in the flour while beating the mixture continuously.

Assemble and boil

  1. Butter a mold and cover the bottom with sultanas.

  2. Pour the mixture into the mold.

  3. Tie a cloth over the mold and boil for two hours.

  4. Serve with melted red currant jelly.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set during boiling.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender texture when creamed with the sugar.
Flour
Forms the structure of the sponge as it sets around the eggs and butter.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps the creamed butter hold air for a lighter crumb.
Sultanas
Add sweetness and chewy fruit pieces that sit on the base of the pudding.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour while beating continuously. Beating keeps the batter smooth and evenly combined. Overmixing once flour is added develops gluten, which can make the pudding tough and dense.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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