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Dessert

Fruit Pudding

A steamed pudding made with flour, suet, molasses, currants, raisins, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon 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 batter

  1. Sift the flour, baking powder, and salt together.

  2. Add the chopped suet, currants, raisins, nutmeg, and cinnamon.

  3. Slowly stir in the milk and molasses, then beat well.

Steam

  1. Steam in small molds for 1½ hours or in large molds for 2½ hours.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Nutmeg + raisintop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

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

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, making the pudding rise and turn light.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding rich and moist as it steams.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, depth of flavour, and a dark colour.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the pudding together as it sets.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and binds the batter into a pourable mixture.

The step that matters

Beating the batter after adding the milk and molasses. Beating develops gluten in the flour, which gives the pudding its structure. Stirring in the liquids slowly keeps the batter smooth so the flour hydrates evenly without lumps.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, beef, molasses, nutmeg, cinnamon, raisin, milk):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, beef, molasses, nutmeg, cinnamon, raisin, 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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