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Dessert

Steamed Fruit Pudding

A steamed dessert made with layers of dough and fruit, served with hard sauce.

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

Steamed Fruit Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, combine flour, baking powder, salt, and butter or lard.

  2. Add milk and stir quickly until just combined. Do not mix for more than one minute.

Steam and serve

  1. Layer some dough in the bottom of a steamer, followed by a layer of fruit, then more dough, and more fruit on top.

  2. Steam for 30 minutes or until cooked through.

  3. Serve with Hard Sauce.

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. Milk + peachtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together781 recipes

    Shared aroma: phellandrene (minty).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + peachtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together860 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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

All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the pudding as it sets while steaming.
Baking powder
Releases gas that leavens the dough, giving it a lighter texture.
Butter or lard
Adds fat that tenderizes the dough and adds richness.
Milk
Hydrates the flour to form a dough and adds moisture.
Fruit
Adds moisture, sweetness, and flavor between the dough layers.

The step that matters

Mixing the dough. Overmixing develops gluten in the flour, which makes the pudding tough and dense rather than tender. Stir only until the milk is just combined, as the record advises.

Swap the peach

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Peachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, 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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