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Dessert

Date Pudding

A steamed pudding made with butter, flour, sugar, baking powder, egg, dates, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Date Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter in a bowl.

  2. Add the sugar, beaten egg, and milk; mix well.

  3. Sift the flour with the baking powder and add to the mixture.

  4. Fold in the dates.

Steam

  1. Drop the mixture into greased molds.

  2. Steam for 30 minutes.

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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Dates + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together470 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

Flour
Forms the main structure of the pudding as its proteins set during cooking.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the pudding rise and become light.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure as it sets.
Butter
Adds fat that gives a tender, rich crumb.
Dates
Add sweetness, moisture, and chewy pockets throughout the pudding.
Milk
Adds moisture and hydrates the flour to form a batter.

The step that matters

Fold in the dates. Fold gently and stop once combined. Overmixing a flour batter develops gluten, which makes the pudding tough and dense instead of tender.

Swap the dates

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

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

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