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Dessert

English Fruit Pudding

A steamed pudding made with currants, raisins, sugar, suet, bread, eggs, baking soda, salt, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,377 recipes. Both carry alpha-terpineol, which smells lilac, floral. The science ↓

English Fruit Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bread

  1. Crumb the soft part of the bread finely.

  2. Soak the crust in boiling milk or water.

Mix the pudding

  1. Beat the eggs and mix all ingredients thoroughly with your hands.

Wrap and boil

  1. Place a square piece of cotton cloth in a tin pan.

  2. Put the pudding mixture into the cloth and tie it securely.

  3. Boil in a pot of water for five hours, adding more water as it evaporates.

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. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

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

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

  3. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Bread + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread
Provides the bulk and structure that holds the pudding together.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set as it cooks.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the fruit.
Currants
Add concentrated fruit flavour and chewy texture.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Keeping the pot topped up with water. If the water boils down and the pudding is exposed, the cloth can scorch and the pudding cooks unevenly. Keeping the cloth fully submerged gives steady, even heat over the five hours.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, sugar, bread, egg, nutmeg. 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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