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Dessert

Steam Pudding

A sweet steamed pudding made with milk, butter, sugar, raisins, flour, baking powder, spices, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Steam Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, mix the sweet milk, sweet butter, and sugar until well combined.

  2. Stir in the raisins (or currants or citron), flour, baking powder, cinnamon or nutmeg, and salt.

Steam

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

  2. Steam the pudding for 2 hours 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. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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 its starches set when heated.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking, helping the pudding rise and become light.
Sweet butter
Adds fat for a tender, rich crumb and a smooth texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and contributes to a softer, moister crumb.
Sweet milk
Provides liquid that hydrates the flour and helps form the batter.

The step that matters

Steam the pudding for 2 hours until cooked through. Steaming cooks the pudding gently with moist heat, so it sets without drying out. Lifting the lid or letting the water boil low can cause uneven cooking, leaving the centre raw or the edges tough.

Swap the raisin

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

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

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