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Receipt for Baked Fruit Pudding

A suet crust pastry filled with rhubarb or apples and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 98,233 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Receipt for Baked Fruit Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Prepare a suet crust and roll it out to ½ inch thick.

  2. Rub a basin with dripping or butter and sprinkle with sugar.

Assemble

  1. Line the basin with the paste and fill it with rhubarb or apples.

  2. Add 2 tablespoons of sugar on top.

  3. Cover with a crust, wetting the edges with cold water, and press to seal.

Bake

  1. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for about 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.

  1. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Sugar + rhubarbtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,852 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Butter + rhubarbtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Suet crust
Forms the pastry case and top that enclose the fruit while it bakes.
Rhubarb or apples
Supply the fruit filling, providing moisture and tartness as they cook.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and helps it caramelise slightly at the base.
Dripping or butter
Greases the basin so the pudding releases cleanly and the base browns.

The step that matters

Sealing the crust. Wetting the edges with cold water and pressing them together creates a bond that keeps juices from leaking out during baking. A poor seal lets the fruit bubble over and the pudding dry out.

Swap the rhubarb

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerfits about as well
  4. Rhubarbthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar. 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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