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Dessert

Fresh Fruit Pudding

A steamed pudding made with butter, sugar, eggs, flour, milk, baking powder, salt, and fresh fruit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Fresh Fruit Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together in a bowl.

  2. Add the beaten egg yolk and mix well.

  3. Gradually add the milk and flour alternately to the mixture.

  4. Sift the baking powder and salt with the flour before adding.

  5. Fold in the beaten egg white gently.

Steam and rest

  1. Turn the mixture into a buttered mold and cover tightly.

  2. Steam for 1 hour, then let it sit covered for 5 hours before serving.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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

All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together as it steams.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender crumb through its fat.
Egg white
Folded in whipped, it traps air and lightens the texture.
Baking powder
Releases gas during steaming, helping the pudding rise.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and helps bind the batter.
Fresh fruit
Adds flavor, moisture and tartness to the pudding.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg white gently. Beaten egg white holds air bubbles that help lighten the batter. Vigorous stirring knocks that air out, leaving a denser pudding after steaming.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, milk, flour. 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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Steamed 91Boiled 17Cold 14English 14Baked 12Tapioca 11 See all 210 →

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