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Dessert

Fruit Pudding

A steamed pudding made with suet or butter, golden syrup, currants, raisins, flour, spices, baking soda, and an egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin 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

Prepare

  1. Beat the butter until creamy.

  2. Add the golden syrup and egg, mixing well.

  3. Sift the flour with baking soda and cream of tartar, then add to the mixture along with the mixed spices.

  4. Gently fold in the currants and raisins.

Steam

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered mold and steam for 3 hours if using butter, or 2 hours if using suet.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  4. Syrup + creamtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together as it sets.
Baking soda
Reacts with the cream of tartar to release gas, lifting the pudding as it steams.
Cream of tartar
Acts with the baking soda to produce rising and a lighter crumb.
Egg
Binds the mixture and helps it set firm during steaming.
Golden syrup
Adds sweetness, moisture and a deep caramel flavour.
Butter
Adds richness, fat and a tender texture.

The step that matters

Pour the mixture into a buttered mold and steam for the full time. Steaming gently cooks the batter through without drying it. Stopping early leaves the centre dense and underset, while uneven heat can make the pudding soggy or cracked.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, raisin, syrup, cream, egg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, raisin, syrup, cream, egg. 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 →

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