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Dessert

Date or Any Fruit Pudding

A steamed pudding made with dates, bread crumbs, suet, sugar, eggs, salt, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Dates and bread work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 100 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Date or Any Fruit Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Combine dates, bread crumbs, suet, sugar, eggs, salt, and nutmeg in a bowl and mix well until all ingredients are combined.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a pudding mold.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam the pudding for 3 hours.

  2. If using dates, prepare a warm sauce flavored with vanilla to serve.

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. Dates + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together100 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  2. Dates + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together194 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  4. Bread + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Egg + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 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

Dates
Provide the main sweetness and moist, chewy body to the pudding.
Bread crumbs
Give the pudding bulk and absorb moisture so it holds together.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the steamed pudding moist and tender.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set as it cooks.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the pudding a softer crumb.

The step that matters

Steaming the pudding for 3 hours. Steaming must be gentle and steady so the eggs set and the pudding cooks through without drying out. Water that boils off unevenly can leave the pudding underdone or dry, so the pot needs enough water maintained throughout.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Allspicefits less well
  4. Clovefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against dates, bread, sugar, egg. 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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