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Dessert

Fruit Pudding

A baked fruit pudding made with flour, suet, berries, currants, raisins, and apple.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin 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

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar.

  2. Add the egg and enough milk to create a very stiff batter.

  3. Fold in the berries or raisins, currants, suet, and chopped apple.

Cook and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

  2. Boil for two hours.

  3. 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 + raisintop 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 + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  4. Currant + appletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Raisin + appletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the bulk of the batter, providing structure as the pudding sets.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking so the pudding rises and turns light.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure as it cooks.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich.
Berries or raisins
Add fruit sweetness and moisture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Make the batter very stiff. A very stiff batter holds the fruit and suet evenly suspended during boiling. Too much milk makes the batter loose, so the fruit sinks and the pudding turns soggy.

Swap the currant

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

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

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