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Dessert

Prune Pudding

A pudding made with prunes, sugar, lemon, butter, milk, yeast, flour, and a sauce of butter, flour, sugar, lemon juice, prune juice, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 ingredients
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Prune Pudding

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 ↓

Prune Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the prunes

  1. Rinse prunes in cold water and pour boiling water over them.

  2. Add sugar, lemon rind, and juice; cook gently for 4-5 hours in an earthen dish.

Make the batter

  1. Melt butter in lukewarm scalded milk.

  2. Dissolve yeast cake, sugar, and salt in the milk mixture, then add the beaten egg.

  3. Stir in flour and set aside to rise in a warm place (90°F) for 1 hour.

Bake and serve

  1. Stir the batter and pour one-third over the cooled prunes in a pudding dish.

  2. Sprinkle with sugar and lemon rind, cover, and let rise for another hour.

  3. Bake in a moderate oven (350°F) for 20-25 minutes, uncovered.

  4. For the sauce, mix butter, flour, sugar, lemon juice, prune juice, and enough boiling water to make 1 cup.

  5. Boil the sauce and serve hot.

  6. Pour remaining batter into patty pans, let rise, and bake.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Prunes
Softened by soaking and slow cooking, they form the fruit base and provide sweetness.
Yeast cake
Produces gas as it ferments, lifting the batter so it rises before baking.
Egg
Adds structure and richness to the batter, helping it set as it bakes.
All-purpose flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the batter its body and structure.
Milk
Moistens the batter and adds softness and richness to the crumb.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and tenderness in the batter and sauce.

The step that matters

Cooking the prunes for 4-5 hours. Long, gentle cooking softens the fruit and concentrates its flavour. Boiling hard can break the prunes apart and make the juice bitter or cloudy.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, milk, egg, flour, sauce. 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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