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Dessert

Fruit Pudding

A steamed fruit pudding made with bread, raisins, currants, nuts, citron, cherries, sugar, lemon juice, butter, salt, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and pistachio match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 693 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Fruit Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit and nuts

  1. Crumble the dry bread into a large bowl.

  2. Wash the currants and add them to the bowl.

  3. Chop the seeded raisins and Sultana raisins, then mix them in.

  4. Chop the mixed nuts and add them to the mixture.

  5. Chop the citron finely or grind it, then add it.

Mix and steam

  1. Add the chopped cherries, sugar, and lemon juice, and stir well.

  2. Mix in the melted butter, salt, and beaten eggs.

  3. Steam the mixture like a plum pudding.

  4. Serve with lemon sauce.

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. Almond + pistachiotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together693 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Walnut + pistachiotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together195 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Pistachio + nutstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together425 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Almond + walnuttop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together993 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Dry bread
Absorbs liquid and gives the pudding its body.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set as it cooks.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps keep the pudding moist.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, raisin, meat, almond, walnut, pistachio, nuts):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, raisin, meat, almond, walnut, pistachio, nuts. 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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