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Dessert

Steamed Prune Pudding

A steamed pudding made with bread crumbs, flour, suet or butter, sugar, eggs, prune pulp, milk, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Steamed Prune Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Mix the dry bread crumbs, flour, baking powder, suet or melted butter, sugar, beaten eggs, prune pulp, milk, and salt together until well combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into a mold and steam for two and a half hours.

Serve

  1. Serve with a hard sauce or creamy 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Dry bread crumbs
Form the body of the pudding and absorb the liquid as it steams.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help give the pudding its set structure.
Prune pulp
Adds moisture and a sweet, dark fruit flavor.
Suet or melted butter
Adds fat, which gives the pudding richness and a tender crumb.
Flour
Adds body and helps hold the pudding together.
Baking powder
Produces gas that lightens the steamed pudding.

The step that matters

Steam for the full time without lifting the lid. Steam is the only heat source, so the pudding sets through gradually. Lifting the lid lets steam escape, cooling the surface and leaving the centre underset and dense.

“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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