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Preserve

Steamed Pudding

A steamed pudding made with bread crumbs, suet, raisins, molasses, and spices, topped with a sweet sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Steamed Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. In a bowl, combine the bread crumbs, flour, cream of tartar, suet, raisins, molasses, milk, baking soda, salt, cloves, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Mix well and pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

  2. Steam the pudding for 3 hours.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For the sauce, combine sugar, water, and milk in a saucepan. Add butter and cornstarch dissolved in a little milk, and boil until thickened.

  2. Pour the sauce over the beaten egg white and serve hot.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Provide the bulk and structure that hold the pudding together.
Suet
Adds richness and moisture, keeping the steamed pudding tender.
Molasses
Adds dark sweetness, moisture and a deep flavor to the pudding.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter so it reacts with baking soda to lighten the texture.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas that helps it rise.
Cornstarch
Thickens the sauce as it boils, giving it a smooth, glossy body.

The step that matters

Boil the sauce until thickened. Cornstarch only thickens fully when the liquid reaches a boil and is kept stirring, so the sauce turns smooth rather than thin or lumpy. Stop too early and it stays runny.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, flour, cream, raisin, molasses, milk, cinnamon):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Clovethe original
  3. Cardamomfits about as well
  4. Allspicefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, flour, cream, raisin, molasses, milk, 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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