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Damson Pudding

A boiled pudding made with beef suet, flour, water, and damsons, sweetened with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Damson Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the crust

  1. Preheat a pot of water for boiling.

  2. In a bowl, rub the shredded beef suet into the flour.

  3. Add water gradually to form a smooth, firm paste.

  4. Line a well-buttered basin with the paste.

  5. Cut a cover for the top.

Fill and boil

  1. Fill the basin with damsons. Sweeten to taste.

  2. Tie a floured cloth tightly over the top.

  3. Boil steadily for 2½ to 3 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 + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Beef + flourtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Beef suet
Adds richness and fat, keeping the crust tender and moist as it cooks.
All-purpose flour
Forms the gluten structure of the paste that holds the pudding together.
Damsons
Provide the fruit filling and tartness that the sugar balances.
Sugar
Sweetens the tart damsons and adds flavour to the filling.

The step that matters

Add water gradually to form the paste. Adding water slowly lets you reach a smooth, firm dough. Too much water makes a slack paste that won't hold its shape or line the basin well, while too little leaves the flour dry and crumbly.

“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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