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Dessert

Fruit Pudding

A steamed pudding made with flour, suet, sugar or molasses, currants, raisins, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Fruit Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a large bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, and salt.

  2. Add the chopped beef suet, sugar or molasses, nutmeg, currants, and raisins. Mix well.

  3. Stir in the milk according to your choice of sweetener.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into small molds and steam for 1¼ hours, or pour into a larger mold and steam for 2¼ 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Nutmeg + raisintop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

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

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Beef + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together as it steams.
Baking powder
Releases gas as it heats, helping the pudding rise and turn light.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich in texture.
Sugar or molasses
Adds sweetness and flavour, with molasses also darkening the pudding.
Milk
Moistens the dry ingredients so they form a batter that sets when steamed.

The step that matters

Steam for the right time for your mold size. Small molds need about 1¼ hours and a larger mold about 2¼ hours. Too short a steam leaves the centre dense and wet, while the batter needs steady, gentle heat to set evenly.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, beef, sugar, nutmeg, raisin, milk):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, beef, sugar, nutmeg, raisin, 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.

More fruit pudding recipes

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