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Dessert

Marmalade Pudding

A steamed pudding made with butter, sugar, eggs, marmalade, flour, and baking soda.

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 ↓

Marmalade Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a mixing bowl, cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the eggs and marmalade, mixing well.

  3. In a separate bowl, combine the flour and baking soda.

  4. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, stirring until smooth.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the batter into a greased pudding mold.

  2. Steam the pudding 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 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 + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Butter
Creams with the sugar to trap air and give the pudding a tender, rich crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps the creamed butter hold air for lightness.
Eggs
Add structure as they set and help bind the batter together.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the pudding as it cooks.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidity in the marmalade to help the pudding rise.
Marmalade
Adds moisture, sweetness and citrus aroma to the batter.

The step that matters

Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture. Adding flour in portions and stirring until smooth prevents lumps and overmixing, which would toughen the crumb. Mixing too vigorously develops gluten and makes the pudding dense.

Swap the orange

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

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

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