Why it works: Flour and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Date Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Make the batter
In a bowl, combine chopped dates, suet, flour, brown sugar, baking powder, salt, and nutmeg.
Make a soft dough by adding eggs and milk.
Beat the egg whites until very stiff and fold them into the mixture.
Cook and serve
Pour the batter into a covered pudding dish and boil for three hours.
Serve hot with a liquid sauce.
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.
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Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together18,623 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Dates + nutmegtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together194 recipes
Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
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Flour + milktop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Dates + milktop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together470 recipes
Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
- Dates
- Provide sweetness, moisture and the main flavour of the pudding.
- Suet
- Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender as it cooks.
- Flour
- Forms the structure that holds the pudding together.
- Brown sugar
- Adds sweetness and a caramel-like depth of flavour.
- Baking powder
- Releases gas during cooking to lighten the batter.
- Eggs
- Bind the dough and, whipped, add lightness to the batter.
The step that matters
Beat the egg whites until very stiff and fold them into the mixture. Stiff whites trap air that expands with heat and lightens the pudding. Overbeaten whites turn dry and grainy, and folding too hard knocks out the air, leaving a dense result.
Swap the dates
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sugar, nutmeg, egg, milk):
- Raisinfits better
- Vanillafits better
- Figfits better
- Datesthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, nutmeg, egg, milk. 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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