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Dessert

Treacle Pudding

A steamed pudding made with flour, suet, ginger, treacle, milk, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Treacle Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the chopped suet, flour, ginger, and baking soda.

  2. In another bowl, beat the egg and add the milk and treacle.

  3. Combine both mixtures and mix well.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour into a well-buttered basin and cover with buttered paper.

  2. Steam for two hours.

  3. Serve with sweet sauce.

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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + gingertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. Ginger + milktop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,519 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

Flour
Forms the main structure of the pudding as it cooks.
Suet
Adds richness and a tender, moist crumb as it melts during steaming.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic treacle to help the pudding rise and lighten.
Treacle
Adds sweetness, dark color, and moisture to the batter.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps give it structure as it sets.

The step that matters

Covering the basin with buttered paper. Steaming relies on trapped moisture, but the pudding must have room to rise. Buttered paper keeps condensation out and stops the top from sticking, so the crumb stays moist and the surface cooks cleanly.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Jalapenofits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, milk, egg. 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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