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Dessert

Boiled Fruit Pudding

A boiled pudding made with flour, butter, molasses, milk, eggs, raisins, currants, dates or prunes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Boiled Fruit Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Sift the flour, baking soda, and salt together in a bowl.

  2. Stir in the raisins and currants (or dates/prunes).

  3. Cream the butter, then gradually mix in the molasses and milk.

  4. Beat the eggs until light, then add them to the butter mixture.

  5. Pour the wet mixture into the center of the flour mixture and stir until combined.

Steam and serve

  1. Butter a pudding boiler and pour in the batter.

  2. Place the boiler in a kettle of boiling water, cover both, and boil for 2 hours.

  3. Serve with foaming 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. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Raisin + molassestop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together as it sets.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses and milk to lighten the batter as it cooks.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender crumb to the pudding.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, and a deep flavor to the pudding.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and lightness as they set.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and natural sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Steaming the pudding in boiling water. The boiler must stay covered and the water must keep boiling for the full two hours. Steam heat cooks the batter gently and evenly; if the water stops boiling or steam escapes, the pudding can turn out heavy or undercooked in the middle.

Swap the currant

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

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

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