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Dessert

Plain Fruit Pudding

A suet-based fruit pudding made with flour, currants, molasses, milk, and spices, steamed or boiled until cooked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Plain Fruit Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a large bowl, combine the suet, flour, currants, molasses, milk, baking soda, salt, ginger, and cloves, and mix until well combined.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a pudding mold or heatproof bowl.

  3. Steam or boil for 3 to 4 hours until cooked through.

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. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Molasses + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,483 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Molasses + gingertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Currant + clovetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

Suet
Adds richness and a tender, moist crumb as it melts during cooking.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together.
Molasses
Adds dark color, moisture and a deep, sweet flavor.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses acidity to lift and lighten the batter.
Currants
Add pockets of concentrated fruit sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Steaming or boiling for the full time. The pudding is dense, so it needs a long, steady, gentle heat to cook through evenly. Stopping early leaves the centre raw and gummy, while a rolling boil can make the mold leak or the surface uneven.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, molasses, milk, ginger, clove. 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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