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Dessert

Damson Pudding

A custard-like pudding made with cream, eggs, flour, cinnamon, and damson fruit pulp, baked and served with melted butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Damson Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Whisk together the cream or milk, eggs, flour, salt, and cinnamon until well combined.

  2. Rub the damsons through a fine sieve to create a pulp.

  3. Add enough damson pulp to the mixture to make it slightly thicker than batter.

Cook and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered basin and cover with a floured cloth.

  2. Boil for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

  3. Turn out the pudding from the basin and pour melted butter over it before serving.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cinnamon + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Eggs
Set the pudding and give it structure as they cook.
Cream or milk
Provides the liquid base and richness for the custard-like batter.
Flour
Thickens the batter so it holds together when boiled.
Damsons
Add fruit flavour and acidity, and thicken the batter as pulp.

The step that matters

Covering the basin with a floured cloth. A floured cloth forms a dry skin that helps keep the pudding's shape and stops water soaking into the batter during the long boil. Keep the cloth tied snugly so the pudding cooks evenly.

Swap the cinnamon

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Jalapenofits about as well
  4. Cinnamonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, egg, flour, butter. 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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