Skip to main content
Dessert

Fruit Pudding

A gelatin-based pudding made with fruit, sugar, lemon juice, and optional fresh fruit, chilled until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Fruit Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gelatin base

  1. Soak the gelatin in cold water.

  2. Add boiling water and let it cool.

  3. Stir in the lemon juice and strain through a fine sieve.

Add the fruit and set

  1. Mix in the sugar, oranges, bananas, figs, walnuts, and any additional fresh fruit.

  2. Pour the mixture into a wet mold and refrigerate until set.

  3. 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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Banana + figtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together104 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Fig + walnuttop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together373 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Orange + figtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together407 recipes

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

  5. Orange + bananatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,118 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm, sliceable pudding as it cools.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the sugar and fruit.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and balances the tartness of the lemon.
Figs
Add body, chew and natural sweetness to the set pudding.
Walnuts
Add crunch and a fat-rich, toasty contrast to the soft set gelatin.

The step that matters

Pour the mixture into a wet mold and refrigerate until set. Gelatin sets only when cold and needs enough time to form its network; if the liquid is too warm or the mixture is not chilled long enough, it will stay loose. A wet mold lets the pudding release without sticking.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (coffee, sugar, orange, banana, fig, walnut):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pearfits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against coffee, sugar, orange, banana, fig, walnut. 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.

More fruit pudding recipes

Steamed 91Boiled 17Cold 14English 14Baked 12Tapioca 11 See all 210 →

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipes