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Dessert

Date Pudding

A steamed pudding made with bread crumbs, flour, suet, dates, egg, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Date Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix the bread crumbs, self-raising flour, grated suet, and chopped dates in a bowl.

  2. Moisten the mixture with the beaten egg and a little milk, ensuring it is not too liquid.

  3. Place the mixture into a greased bag.

Cook

  1. Cook the bag in boiling water for 1 hour.

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. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Bread + datestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together100 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Dates + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together470 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Bread crumbs
Provide bulk and a soft, absorbent body for the pudding.
Self-raising flour
Adds structure and helps the pudding rise and set as it cooks.
Grated suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich in texture.
Dates
Add natural sweetness and a soft, chewy texture.
Egg
Binds the mixture together and helps it set as it cooks.

The step that matters

Moistening the mixture. The mixture should be moist but not too liquid. Too much milk makes the pudding heavy and wet, while too little leaves it dry and crumbly, since the bread crumbs and flour need enough moisture to hydrate and bind.

Swap the dates

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Datesthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, flour, egg, 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 date pudding recipes

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