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Dessert

Light Fruit Pudding

A baked pudding made with eggs, flour, milk, sugar, and small fruit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Light Fruit Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs in a bowl.

  2. Mix in the flour, a little milk, and sugar to form a thick batter.

  3. Spread the batter in a deep oval pudding dish to the very edge.

Bake and serve

  1. Fill the center with fresh ripe small fruit.

  2. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until done.

  3. Carefully slip the pudding off the deep dish onto a flat one, ensuring it has plenty of juice.

  4. If fresh fruit is not in season, use preserved fruit.

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 + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 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

Eggs
Set as the batter bakes, binding the pudding into a firm, sliceable body.
Flour
Thickens the batter and gives the pudding its body and structure.
Milk
Loosens the batter and adds moisture to the finished pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness, balancing the tartness of the fruit.
Ripe small fruit
Adds juice, flavour and colour to the centre of the pudding.

The step that matters

Bake until done. Heat sets the egg proteins and thickened batter into a firm custard-like body. Underbaked centres stay runny and may collapse when the pudding is turned out.

“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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