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Dessert

Boiled Fruit Pudding

A sweet pudding made with flour, raisins, currants, butter, molasses, milk, and eggs, boiled for two hours.

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 and gradually mix in the molasses and milk.

  4. Beat the eggs until light, then combine the yolks and whites.

  5. Pour the molasses mixture into the flour mixture and stir to combine.

  6. Add the beaten eggs and mix until well combined.

Steam and serve

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

  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

All-purpose flour
Forms the structure that holds the pudding together as it steams.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses and creates gas that lightens the pudding.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness to the crumb.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, and moisture with a deep flavor.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender texture to the batter.
Raisins
Add chewy sweetness and moisture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Keep the boiler covered and the water boiling for the full 2 hours. Steaming depends on steady heat and trapped moisture. If the water stops boiling or the lid is left open, the pudding cooks unevenly and may turn out dense and soggy.

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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