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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
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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 ↓

Lemon Syrup Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Grate the lemon rind and mix it with the flour, suet, and bread crumbs.

  2. Add the egg, lemon juice, and syrup, then mix in the milk.

  3. Beat all ingredients together 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

Bread crumbs
Add bulk and soak up liquid, giving the pudding a light, soft body.
All-purpose flour
Provides structure as the batter sets during steaming.
Shredded suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Egg
Binds the mixture and helps it set firm when heated.
Lyle's golden syrup
Adds sweetness and a caramel note that browns slightly during cooking.
Milk
Supplies moisture so the batter forms a smooth, pourable mixture.

The step that matters

Steam or boil for 2 hours. Steaming gently and keeping the water at a steady simmer cooks the batter evenly. Boiling too hard or letting the water run low can make the pudding dry or uneven.

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.

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