Skip to main content
Dessert

West Riding Pudding

A baked pudding made with eggs, butter, sugar, flour, baking powder, jam, and lemon or rind flavoring.

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

Why it works: Red currant and lemon work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 309 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

West Riding Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Beat the butter until creamy.

  3. Add the eggs and sugar gradually, beating for a few minutes.

  4. Stir in the flour and baking powder.

  5. Add flavoring to taste.

Assemble and bake

  1. Spread jam at the bottom of a shallow pie dish.

  2. Pour the mixture over the jam and decorate the edge with pastry leaves.

  3. Bake until set and golden. Serve hot or cold.

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. Red currant + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together309 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

Eggs
Set the batter into a light, cohesive sponge structure as they cook.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender crumb through its fat content.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps it brown during baking.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the sponge together once baked.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the sponge rises and stays light.
Jam
Forms a sweet, fruity layer that softens and flavors the base of the pudding.

The step that matters

Beat the butter, eggs and sugar well. Creaming butter with sugar traps air that expands in the oven, and gradually added eggs keep the emulsion from splitting. Together these give the sponge its lift and an even crumb.

Swap the red currant

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Red currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, sugar, flour, lemon. 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 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesRed Currant JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipes