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Dessert

Pudding of Prunes or French Plums

A baked pudding made from prunes, flour, milk, and eggs, boiled for two hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Pudding of Prunes or French Plums

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the prunes

  1. Scald the prunes.

  2. Let the prunes swell in hot water until soft.

  3. Drain the prunes.

  4. Remove the stones from the prunes.

  5. Spread the prunes on a large dish.

  6. Dredge the prunes with flour.

Make the batter

  1. Gradually stir ⅓ cup of milk into 1 cup of fine flour to make a smooth batter.

  2. Beat the eggs lightly.

  3. Stir the beaten eggs into the milk alternately with the batter.

  4. Add the prunes gradually to the mixture.

  5. Mix everything together.

Boil and serve

  1. Tie the pudding in a cloth.

  2. Dip the cloth in boiling water.

  3. Dredge the pudding with flour, leaving room for it to swell.

  4. Place the pudding in boiling water.

  5. Boil the pudding for 2 hours without removing it until ready to serve.

  6. Serve the pudding with pudding sauce.

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 + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + eggtop 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

Prunes
Swell and soften in hot water, then give body, sweetness and flavour to the pudding.
Eggs
Bind the batter and set as the pudding cooks, giving it a firm, tender structure.
Fine flour
Forms the batter with the milk, providing structure as the pudding sets.
Milk
Moistens the batter and helps the eggs and flour combine into a smooth mixture.

The step that matters

Dredge the pudding with flour, leaving room for it to swell. Flour on the cloth forms a coating that helps the pudding hold its shape while boiling. Leaving room lets the pudding expand as it cooks; packing the cloth tightly can cause it to burst or cook unevenly.

“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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