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Dessert

Fruit Pudding

A baked fruit pudding made with apples, raisins, currants, suet, breadcrumbs, eggs, and a sweet sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,180 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, creamy. The science ↓

Fruit Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Combine chopped apples, bread crumbs, beef suet, sugar, raisins, currants, eggs, and sliced citron in a bowl.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a closed form and boil for 3 to 4 hours.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, mix sugar and butter in a saucepan and boil for a few minutes.

  2. Remove from heat and stir in the beaten egg and sherry just before serving.

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 + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

  2. Apple + curranttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Bread + beeftop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  4. Apple + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,920 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the pudding a soft, sliceable body.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Eggs
Bind the ingredients together and help set the pudding.
Apples
Add moisture and fruity tartness to the pudding.
Raisins
Add chewy sweetness and concentrated fruit flavour.

The step that matters

Boiling the closed form. The pudding must stay fully submerged and steadily simmering for the whole 3 to 4 hours, because uneven heat or boiling dry can scorch it or leave the centre undercooked and dense.

Swap the currant

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

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

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

More fruit pudding recipes

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