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Dessert

Dried Cherry Pudding

A pudding made with eggs, sugar, milk, flour, bread, suet, salt, and cherries, boiled for several hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and bread 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 ↓

Dried Cherry Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs until very light.

  2. Add the sugar, sweet milk, flour, grated bread, chopped suet, and salt; mix well.

  3. Fold in the cherries.

Boil the pudding

  1. Boil the mixture for 3 to 4 hours, stirring frequently to prevent the fruit from settling.

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. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour 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

Eggs
Beaten light, they add structure and help the pudding set and hold together.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the pudding together as it cooks.
Chopped suet
Adds fat that makes the pudding rich and tender.
Grated bread
Adds body and absorbs liquid, giving the pudding a soft, crumbly texture.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and helps keep the pudding moist and tender.
Cherries
Add fruity sweetness and tartness, plus moisture and flavour throughout.

The step that matters

Stirring during the long boil. The batter is thick and the cherries are heavier, so they sink and settle. Stirring frequently keeps the fruit evenly distributed, so the pudding cooks uniformly and each portion has fruit.

“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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