Name: Date Pudding
Ingredients: 1 lb bread crumbs; 1 lb all-purpose flour; 2 teaspoons baking powder; 2 oz sugar; 1 lb suet, finely chopped; 4 lb dates, stoned and chopped; 1 egg; Milk, as needed; 1 lemon, grated rind

Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Date Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

Mix the bread crumbs, flour, baking powder, sugar, and grated lemon rind in a bowl.
Add the egg and enough milk to create a stiff batter.

Steam and serve

Pour the mixture into a well-greased basin.
Steam for 2 hours.

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.

Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,466 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Bread + datestop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together100 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

Bread crumbs: Provide the bulk of the pudding and absorb moisture from the milk and egg.
All-purpose flour: Adds structure so the batter holds together as it steams.
Baking powder: Releases gas during steaming, helping the pudding rise and turn lighter.
Egg: Binds the batter and adds structure as it sets.

Swap the lemon

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

Vanillafits better
Figfits better
Raisinfits better
Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, flour, sugar, dates, egg, milk. 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.