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Dessert

Fruit Pudding

A steamed or boiled pudding made with milk, suet, raisins, currants, molasses, baking powder, bread crumbs, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Fruit Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine milk, minced suet, raisins, currants, and molasses in a bowl.

  2. Stiffen the mixture with bread crumbs and a little flour, adding baking powder to the flour and crumbs.

  3. Boil or steam the pudding until fully cooked.

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. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Raisin + molassestop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Milk
Provides moisture that hydrates the crumbs and flour into a cohesive batter.
Minced suet
Adds fat that enriches the pudding and keeps it moist and tender as it cooks.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking, helping the pudding rise and become light.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, and a rich, deep flavor.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the mixture enough body to hold its shape.

The step that matters

Stiffen the mixture. The bread crumbs and flour must absorb the liquid to give the right firm consistency. If the mixture stays too wet, the pudding may turn out heavy and collapse; adding too little binder leaves it loose.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, raisin, molasses, bread, 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.

More fruit pudding recipes

Steamed 91Boiled 17Cold 14English 14Baked 12Tapioca 11 See all 210 →

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