Skip to main content
Dessert

Fruit and Custard Pudding

A custard pudding made with stewed fruit, breadcrumbs, milk, eggs, butter, sugar, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Plum and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 513 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Fruit and Custard Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Grease a pie dish.

Make the custard

  1. In a bowl, mix the breadcrumbs and fruit.

  2. Melt the butter and combine it with the other ingredients, adding sugar and cinnamon.

  3. Beat the eggs with the milk.

  4. Mix the beaten eggs and milk with the rest of the pudding mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into the dish.

  2. Bake until nicely brown.

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. Plum + cinnamontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together513 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Plum + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together406 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Breadcrumbs
Absorb liquid and give the pudding body and a soft, spoonable structure.
Eggs
Set as they cook, binding the mixture into a custard.
Milk
Adds moisture and creaminess, and helps the eggs form a smooth custard.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture.
Plums
Provide fruit flavour, sweetness and moisture.

The step that matters

Bake until nicely brown. Egg proteins set as they heat, so the custard turns firm and smooth. Overbaking tightens the eggs further, making the pudding dry, rubbery or curdled.

Swap the plum

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, sugar, cinnamon, butter. 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.

You might also like

Cinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesCinnamon CakeCinnamon Cake42 recipesMixed Fruit SherbetMixed Fruit Sherbet6 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipes