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Dessert

Fruit Pudding

Fruit Pudding is a baked dumpling made with flour dough and fruit, topped with butter, cinnamon, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,598 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Fruit 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 the dough

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

  2. In a bowl, mix flour, baking powder, sugar, butter, salt, and enough milk to form a dough.

  3. Roll out the dough to a thickness suitable for pie crust.

  4. Cut the dough into 4-inch squares.

Fill and shape

  1. Place half of an apple or peach in the center of each square.

  2. Pinch the corners together to seal the dumplings.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the dumplings in a buttered pan.

  2. Top each dumpling with a small piece of butter, a sprinkle of cinnamon, and sugar.

  3. Pour ½ pint of water into the pan.

  4. Bake until golden and serve with sweetened milk or cream.

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. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

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

  3. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Flour
Forms the dough structure that holds the fruit filling while baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas as it heats, helping the dough rise and become tender.
Butter
Adds fat that makes the dough tender and flaky and browns the surface.
Egg
Binds the dough and adds richness to its structure.
Apple or peach
Provides the fruit filling, whose moisture and sugars soften and sweeten during baking.

The step that matters

Pinch the corners together to seal the dumplings. If the seams are not sealed well, the fruit juices can leak into the pan during baking, leaving the dumplings dry and the filling thin.

Swap the apple

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

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

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

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