Name: Boiled Fruit and Meat Puddings
Ingredients: ½ lb suet (or beef marrow); ½ lb self-raising flour; 2 eggs; 1 pint milk; ½ lb red cherries; 1 lb sugar; 1 glass noyeau; water as required

Why it works: Beef and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,759 recipes. Both carry 1-hexanal, which smells fruit. The science ↓

Boiled Fruit and Meat Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the crust

Mince the suet very finely or rub the marrow into the flour.
Mix the dry ingredients thoroughly and lightly.
Make a paste with water using a knife for mixing until it leaves the sides of the bowl dry.
Dust a board with flour and turn the mixture out.
Grease a plain basin with butter, ensuring no water is in the butter or dripping.

Fill the basin

Line the basin with a thin crust and fill the bottom with cherries.
Sprinkle some pearl sugar over the cherries and add the rest of the fruit to half‑fill the basin.
Cover with a layer of crust (not too thin).

Make the custard and steam

Make a custard with the eggs and ¼ pint of milk, thickening it in a jug over boiling water while stirring continuously.
Sweeten the custard and stir in the noyeau.
Pour the custard gently into the basin and cover with paste.
Steam for 1½ hours and serve.

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.

Beef + milktop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,759 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).
Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together106,462 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together88,785 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Suet: Adds fat that keeps the crust tender and rich as it cooks.
Self-raising flour: Forms the structure of the crust, setting firm as it steams.
Eggs: Set the custard, giving it a thick, creamy body.
Milk: Forms the liquid base of the custard, adding richness and softness.
Red cherries: Provide fruit flavour and juiciness that moistens the pudding.
Sugar: Sweetens the custard and fruit, balancing their tartness.

The step that matters

Thickening the custard over boiling water. Eggs set when heated gently; if the custard gets too hot or is not stirred constantly, the eggs can scramble and curdle, leaving a grainy texture instead of a smooth custard.

“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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Boiled Fruit and Meat Puddings