Skip to main content
Dessert

Lemon Syrup Pudding

A steamed pudding made with bread crumbs, flour, suet, lemon rind and juice, egg, golden syrup, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Lemon Syrup Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Grate the lemon rind.

  2. Mix the lemon rind with the flour, suet, and bread crumbs.

  3. Add the egg, lemon juice, and syrup to the mixture.

  4. Finally, stir in the milk until well combined.

Steam

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased basin.

  2. Steam or boil for 2 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. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  5. Flour + eggtop 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

Lyle's golden syrup
Provides sweetness and a rich, sticky flavour that soaks into the sponge.
Suet
Adds fat for a moist, tender texture as it melts during cooking.
Egg
Binds the ingredients together and adds structure to the pudding.
Bread crumbs
Add bulk and absorb moisture, giving the pudding a light, soft body.
Flour
Provides structure so the pudding holds together when cooked.

The step that matters

Steaming the pudding. The basin must be steamed or boiled gently for the full time so the batter cooks through evenly. Too little heat or time leaves the centre dense and underdone, while a tightly sealed basin needs room to avoid pressure build-up.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes