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Dessert

Pudding of Prunes or French Plums

A boiled pudding made from prunes, flour, milk, and eggs, served with sauce.

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 and let them swell in hot water until soft.

  2. Drain the prunes and remove the stones.

  3. Spread the prunes on a large dish and 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 eggs into the quart of milk alternately with the batter.

  4. Add the prunes gradually.

  5. Mix everything together.

Boil the pudding

  1. Tie the pudding in a cloth.

  2. Dip the cloth in boiling water.

  3. Dredge the cloth with flour.

  4. Leave room for the pudding to swell.

  5. Place the pudding in boiling water.

  6. Boil for 2 hours without removing it.

  7. Serve 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
Provide the main fruit body and sweetness, softened by soaking and boiling in the pudding.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help set the pudding into a firm, custard-like texture.
Fine flour
Forms the batter base that gives the pudding its body and structure.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness, loosening the batter and softening the flour.

The step that matters

Leave room for the pudding to swell. The batter expands as it cooks, so a cloth tied too tightly can burst or squeeze the pudding. Leaving space lets it rise and set evenly in the boiling water.

“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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