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Dessert

English Fruit Pudding

A steamed pudding made with stale bread, milk, eggs, butter, sugar, currants, raisins, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

English Fruit Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix the stale bread with sweet milk.

  2. Add the eggs, butter, brown sugar, currants, raisins, cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, and baking soda, then stir until well combined.

Steam

  1. Steam the mixture for three 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

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

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

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

  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

Stale bread
Soaks up the milk and gives the pudding its body as it steams.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set firm as it cooks.
Butter
Adds richness and a soft, tender crumb.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a deeper, molasses-like flavor.
Raisins
Add chewy sweetness and fruit flavor throughout the pudding.
Baking soda
Helps the pudding rise and become lighter in texture.

The step that matters

Steam the mixture for three hours. Steaming gently cooks the egg and bread mixture through without drying it out. Keep the water simmering steadily so the pudding stays moist and sets evenly.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, milk, egg, butter, sugar, currant, raisin):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Allspicefits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, egg, butter, sugar, currant, raisin. 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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