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Dessert

Fruit Pudding

A steamed pudding made with suet, bread crumbs, sugar, raisins, flour, sour milk, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour 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 ↓

Fruit Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine chopped suet, bread crumbs, sugar, raisins, flour, sour milk, and baking soda, then mix well until all ingredients are combined.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a greased pudding mold.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam the pudding for 2 hours.

  2. Serve with lemon 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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Raisin + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

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

Suet
Melts during steaming to add richness and keep the pudding moist and tender.
Flour
Provides the starch and gluten network that gives the pudding its body and structure.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and soften, adding body and a lighter, less dense crumb.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda and adds a tangy note to the pudding.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in sour milk to release gas that helps the pudding rise.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps keep the pudding moist and tender.

The step that matters

Steaming for the full 2 hours. Gentle, steady steam cooks the batter through evenly. If the water boils dry or the heat drops, the pudding can turn out undercooked in the centre or dry at the edges.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, sugar, flour, milk):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sugar, flour, 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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