Name: Steamed Fruit Pudding
Ingredients: 6 heaping tablespoons flour; ¼ teaspoon salt; 1 heaping teaspoon baking powder; 2 tablespoons cream; water (enough to make a soft dough); 1 pint preserved or stewed fruit (well sweetened)

Why it works: Flour and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 30,481 recipes. Both carry acetaldehyde, which smells pungent, ethereal. The science ↓

Steamed Fruit Pudding

Ingredients

6 heaping tablespoons flour
¼ teaspoon salt
1 heaping teaspoon baking powder
2 tablespoons cream
water (enough to make a soft dough)
1 pint preserved or stewed fruit (well sweetened)

Directions

Make the dough

In a bowl, combine flour, salt, baking powder, cream, and enough water to form a soft dough. Mix the dough lightly.
Fold in the sweetened fruit.

Steam and serve

Steam the mixture for 40 minutes, ensuring the steam remains at a consistent heat.
Serve with syrup made from the fruit juice 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.

Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together30,481 recipes

Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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 soft dough that holds the pudding together.
Baking powder: Releases gas during steaming, helping the pudding rise and become light.
Cream: Adds fat and moisture, making the dough richer and more tender.
Preserved or stewed fruit: Provides sweetness, moisture and flavour throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Steam at a steady heat. Steam that drops or surges changes the temperature around the pudding, which can make it heavy or uneven. Keeping the steam consistent lets the baking powder lift the dough evenly as it cooks through.

“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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Steamed Fruit Pudding