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Fiuit Pudding Puffs

A steamed pudding puff filled with fruit, served with a sweet sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Fiuit Pudding Puffs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix milk, egg, butter, baking powder, and enough flour to create a stiff batter.

  2. Fold in the cherries or other fruit.

Steam the puffs

  1. Pour the mixture into cups and steam for 30 to 40 minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, combine sugar, water, butter, flour, and vinegar in a saucepan.

  2. Cook until thickened, adding cinnamon for flavor.

  3. Alternatively, use 1 cup of fruit juice instead of vinegar and water for the 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 stiff batter structure that holds the puffs together as they steam.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the puffs rise and turn light.
Egg
Adds structure and binding to the batter as it sets.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, contributing to tenderness and flavor in the batter.
Milk
Provides moisture and liquid that hydrates the flour in the batter.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and helps it thicken with the flour as it cooks.

The step that matters

Cooking the sauce until thickened. Flour thickens only when heated with liquid long enough for its starch to swell. Stopping early leaves the sauce thin, while overcooking can make it pasty or scorch on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the cinnamon

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

  1. Cinnamonthe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Tarragonfits less well

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