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Dessert

Delicate Pudding

A steamed pudding made with raisins, butter, flour, sugar, egg, baking powder, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Delicate Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the raisins or currants with the softened butter until well combined.

  2. Add the flour gradually to form a stiff batter.

  3. In another bowl, beat the sugar and egg together until light and fluffy.

  4. Stir the baking powder and milk into the egg mixture.

  5. Combine both mixtures and mix until smooth.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the batter into a greased pudding mold.

  2. Steam for one hour until cooked through.

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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 fat and richness, giving the pudding a tender, moist crumb.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that sets the batter into a firm, sliceable pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps it brown slightly and stay tender.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure as it sets during cooking.
Baking powder
Releases gas that lifts the batter, producing a light texture.

The step that matters

Steaming the pudding. Steam must stay steady and the mold must be sealed so the pudding cooks through evenly. Water that boils dry or leaks in can leave the center underdone or the texture soggy.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Coconutfits less well

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