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Dessert

Steamed Berry Pudding

A steamed pudding made with sweet milk, eggs, salt, baking powder, flour, and berries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour 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 ↓

Steamed Berry Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine sweet milk and beaten eggs.

  2. Add salt and baking powder, then mix in enough flour to create a stiff batter.

  3. Flour the berries and gently fold them into the batter.

Steam

  1. Grease moulds, cups, or small glasses and fill them with the batter.

  2. Place the filled moulds in a steamer over a kettle of boiling water.

  3. Steam for 45 minutes.

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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + curranttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

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

  5. Egg + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,734 recipes

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

Milk and flour 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during steaming.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the pudding rise and turn light.
Flour
Forms the stiff batter that gives the pudding its body and holds the berries.
Sweet milk
Provides the liquid that hydrates the flour and adds richness.
Berries
Add tart flavour and juiciness that bake into the pudding without running.

The step that matters

Flour the berries before folding. Dusting berries with flour helps them stay suspended in the batter instead of sinking to the bottom during steaming. Gentle folding keeps the batter light so it does not toughen or deflate.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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