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Dessert

Fruit Pudding

A sweet dessert made with prunes, apples, raisins, sugar, and cornstarch, served chilled with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Fruit Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Stew prunes until tender and remove seeds.

  2. In a pot, combine prunes, sliced apples, raisins, and sugar.

  3. Cook until apples are soft.

Thicken and set

  1. Thicken the mixture with cornstarch.

  2. Pour into a dish and let stand until cold.

Serve

  1. Serve with whipped cream.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Apple + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,920 recipes

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

  3. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  4. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

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

  5. Raisin + creamtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,642 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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

Prunes
Soften into a tender base and add deep, sweet fruit flavor.
Apples
Break down when cooked to add body and a mild, tart sweetness.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture to the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and helps draw out juices as it cooks.
Cornstarch
Thickens the cooking juices so the mixture sets as it cools.

The step that matters

Thicken the mixture with cornstarch. Cornstarch must be cooked with the hot liquid to swell and thicken. Adding it to fruit that is not hot enough, or not simmering, can leave the pudding thin or grainy once cooled.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, sugar, cream):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, sugar, cream. 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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