Skip to main content
Dessert

Fruit Puff Pudding

A steamed pudding made with batter, fruit, and a sweet sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Fruit Puff Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Mix flour, baking powder, and salt thoroughly.

  2. Make a soft batter with milk.

  3. In greased cups, add 1 spoonful of batter, then fruit, and cover with another spoonful of batter.

  4. Steam for 30 minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, cream together sugar and butter.

  2. In a saucepan, bring water to a boil, then thicken with flour mixed in cold water until creamy.

  3. Remove from heat and stir into the butter and sugar mixture.

  4. Flavor with nutmeg or vinegar for a sour 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Apple + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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 batter structure and, mixed with cold water, thickens the sauce.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the pudding rises and turns light.
Butter
Adds richness and a creamy texture to the sauce.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and helps it cream smoothly with the butter.
Apples or other fruit
Provides moisture and fruity flavor inside the puddings.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce with flour. Flour mixed into boiling water must be blended in cold water first, or it forms lumps. Starch thickens the liquid only as it heats, so it should be stirred until creamy before the sauce is combined with the butter and sugar.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, milk, sugar, butter, nutmeg, vinegar, sauce):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, milk, sugar, butter, nutmeg, vinegar, sauce. 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.

You might also like

Apple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesApple CakeApple Cake80 recipesApple MeringueApple Meringue75 recipesDried Apple CakeDried Apple Cake51 recipes