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Dessert

Cherry or Fruit Pudding

A steamed pudding made with butter, sugar, eggs, milk, flour, baking powder, and raisins or cherries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cherry or Fruit Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. If using sour cherries, pit them and let them sit in sugar for a while to sweeten.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, cream together the sugar and butter.

  2. Add the eggs and mix well.

  3. Stir in the sweet milk and chopped raisins or sweetened cherries.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine the flour and baking powder.

  5. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, stirring until just combined.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the batter into a buttered mold.

  2. Steam for one hour.

  3. Serve with pudding sauce.

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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air and add richness and tenderness to the crumb.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as the pudding sets.
Flour
Forms the structure of the pudding as the batter sets during steaming.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the pudding rises and becomes light.
Sweet milk
Hydrates the flour and adds moisture to form a pourable batter.
Raisins or sour cherries
Provide fruit flavor, sweetness and moisture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Stirring the dry ingredients into the wet mixture. Overmixing once flour meets liquid develops gluten, making the pudding tough and dense instead of tender. Stir only until the flour is just combined.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Coconutfits less well

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