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Dessert

Fruit Pudding

A steamed pudding made with grated bread crumbs, molasses, suet, and spices, often served with sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Fruit Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Combine the grated bread crumbs, molasses, egg, chopped suet, cinnamon, salt, baking soda mixture, and cloves in a large bowl. Mix well until all ingredients are combined.

  2. If desired, add raisins and other fruit.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

  2. Steam for 2 hours.

  3. Serve with 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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

  3. Clove + raisintop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  4. Cinnamon + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Provide the bulk and body that hold the pudding together.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark colour and a rich, moist texture.
Egg
Binds the ingredients so the pudding sets firm after steaming.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender as it cooks.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses to lighten the texture and aid rising.

The step that matters

Steam for 2 hours. Steaming gently and steadily cooks the batter through without drying it out. If the water boils dry or the steam drops, the pudding can turn heavy or unevenly set.

Swap the raisin

The recipe marks raisin as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, molasses, egg, cinnamon, milk, clove):

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

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