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Dessert

Date Pudding

A steamed pudding made with suet, dates, sugar, baking powder, flour, salt, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Date Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine the chopped suet, dates, sugar, baking powder, flour, salt, and milk. Mix until well combined.

Steam and serve

  1. Bring a pot of water to a boil.

  2. Place the pudding mixture in a pudding mold or heatproof dish and lower it into the boiling water.

  3. Cover and boil for 2.5 hours.

  4. Serve warm.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Dates + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together470 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Dates + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

Flour
Forms the structure of the pudding as it cooks.
Suet
Adds richness and moisture, keeping the pudding tender.
Baking powder
Releases gas that lightens the pudding's texture.
Dates
Add natural sweetness and a soft, moist chew.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crumb brown slightly.

The step that matters

Keep the water boiling for the full cooking time. Steaming in a covered mold under steady boiling water cooks the pudding evenly and keeps it moist. If the water level drops or the boil weakens, the pudding cooks unevenly and can turn dense or soggy.

Swap the dates

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

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

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