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Dessert

To Make a Prune Pudding

A pudding made with milk, eggs, flour, ginger, prunes, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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To Make a Prune Pudding

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

To Make a Prune Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, beat 6 eggs with ½ pint of milk, flour, salt, and ginger.

  2. Gradually mix in the remaining milk.

  3. Add the prunes and mix well.

Cook and serve

  1. Tie the mixture in a cloth and boil for 1 hour.

  2. Melt butter and pour it over the pudding before serving.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + gingertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Bind the batter and set into a firm, sliceable pudding as they cook.
Flour
Thickens the batter and gives the pudding body as it cooks.
Milk
Adds moisture and softens the batter for a tender, custard-like texture.
Prunes
Add sweetness, moisture, and a deep, fruity flavour.
Ginger
Adds warm, aromatic spice that balances the sweetness of the prunes.

The step that matters

Boil the pudding gently in the cloth. Eggs and flour set best with steady, moderate heat. A hard, rolling boil can toughen the texture and force water into the pudding. Tie the cloth with room for the pudding to swell.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, flour, butter. 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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