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Dessert

Jubilee Pudding

A steamed pudding made with butter, brown sugar, eggs, preserved fruit, baking soda, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 ↓

Jubilee Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and brown sugar together.

  2. Add the beaten eggs and preserved fruit, mixing well.

  3. Sift in the baking soda and flour, and stir until combined.

Steam

  1. Pour the mixture into a mold and steam for one hour.

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
Adds richness and a tender texture as it is creamed with the sugar.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and deepens the flavour of the pudding.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during steaming.
Preserved strawberries
Add fruity flavour and sweetness throughout the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts to create gas bubbles that lighten the batter and help it rise.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together once cooked.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour gently. Once flour meets liquid, overmixing develops gluten, which makes the pudding tough and dense. Stir only until the flour is just combined.

“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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