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Dessert

Boiled Fruit Pudding

A boiled dessert made with a dumpling crust, plums or gooseberries, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Plum and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,313 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Boiled Fruit Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Make a crust for boiled dumplings and line a bowl with it.

  2. Fill the bowl with plums or gooseberries and add plenty of sugar.

  3. Cover with another crust, trim the edges, and press them together.

Boil

  1. Place a plate over the bowl, then cover with a pudding cloth and tie it with strong twine.

  2. Pin the ends of the cloth on top and place the bowl in boiling water.

  3. Boil for two hours.

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. Plum + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,313 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Boiled dumpling crust
Forms the enclosing pastry that holds the fruit and steams as it cooks.
Plums or gooseberries
Provide the main fruit filling, releasing juice that becomes the sauce as it cooks.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and helps draw out its juices.

The step that matters

Sealing the crust and cloth. If the crust edges are not pressed firmly together, or the cloth is not tied securely, water can enter the bowl and dilute the filling. Steam trapped inside also needs the cloth sealed so the pudding cooks evenly.

“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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