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Dessert

Fruit Pudding

Fruit pudding made with bread, suet, molasses, raisins, milk, eggs, butter, sugar, and spices, boiled and served with a butter‑sugar sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Fruit Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Combine chopped bread, chopped suet, molasses, egg, raisins, milk, baking soda, cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt in a bowl, then mix well and pour the mixture into a double boiler.

  2. Boil for 2 hours.

Make the sauce

  1. Cream together butter and sugar for the sauce.

  2. Add the beaten egg and boiling water, mixing until smooth.

  3. Place the sauce bowl over a pot of simmering water until it thickens.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Bread
Soaks up the milk and molasses to give the pudding a soft, moist body.
Suet
Adds fat that enriches the pudding and keeps it tender as it steams.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark colour and moisture with a deep, rich flavour.
Egg
Binds the pudding and sets it so it holds together when cooked.
Butter
Provides fat and richness that gives the sauce a smooth, creamy texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and helps it cream smoothly with the butter.

The step that matters

Place the sauce bowl over simmering water until it thickens. Gentle heat thickens the egg-enriched sauce slowly; if the water boils hard or the heat is too high, the egg can scramble and the sauce will curdle.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, molasses, egg, milk, clove, cinnamon, nutmeg):

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Raisinthe original
  4. Applefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, molasses, egg, milk, clove, cinnamon, nutmeg. 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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