Skip to main content
Dessert

Half-hour Pudding

A fruit pudding made with a layer of fruit topped with a biscuit-like dough and baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Half-hour Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the fruit

  1. Place a 1-inch layer of fruit in a pudding pan.

  2. Add ½ cup of sugar and ½ cup of water, adjusting sugar to taste.

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix 1 pint of flour, walnut-sized butter, ¼ teaspoon salt, and 1 tablespoon baking powder.

  2. Add enough cold water to make a soft dough, similar to biscuit dough.

  3. Spread the dough over the layer of fruit.

Bake

  1. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until golden.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Walnut + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Flour and butter 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

Fruit
Forms the base layer and adds flavor and moisture to the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the fruit.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the dough together and sets as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for a more tender crumb and richer flavor.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the dough rises and becomes light.

The step that matters

Add enough cold water to make a soft dough. The dough needs enough moisture to hold together like biscuit dough. Too little water leaves it dry and crumbly, while too much makes it slack and dense. Mixing gently keeps it tender.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Macadamia nutfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

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

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes