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Dessert

Steamed Puddings

A steamed pudding made with flour, butter, egg, milk, and optional fruit or dried fruit, served with cream or sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin 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 ↓

Steamed Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Sift together the flour, salt, and baking powder.

  2. Rub in the butter until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs.

  3. Mix in the beaten egg and scant cup of milk until combined.

Steam and serve

  1. Place a peach or apricot in each cup and top with batter.

  2. Steam for 20 to 30 minutes.

  3. Serve with cream or hard sauce.

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. Flour + raisintop 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. Milk + peachtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together781 recipes

    Shared aroma: phellandrene (minty).

  4. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Forms the structure of the pudding as the batter sets during steaming.
Butter
Rubbed into the flour to tenderise the crumb and add richness.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the pudding rises and becomes light.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps set its structure as it cooks.
Milk
Hydrates the flour to form a batter with a soft, moist texture.

The step that matters

Steam for 20 to 30 minutes. Steam keeps the batter moist while it sets. Lifting the lid or letting the water boil dry can cause uneven cooking and a dense, soggy centre.

Swap the peach

The recipe marks peach as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, egg, milk, currant, raisin, dates):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Peachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, egg, milk, currant, raisin, dates. 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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