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Dessert

Imperial Pudding

A suet paste fruit pudding made with plums, honey, apricot jam, lemon juice, and optional almonds, steamed for three hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Plum and apricot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 284 recipes. Both carry damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Imperial Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Assemble

  1. Line a basin thinly with the suet paste.

  2. Layer the basin with thin layers of paste and stoned fruit.

  3. Spread each layer with honey and jam.

  4. Squeeze lemon juice over each layer.

  5. Top with a thicker layer of paste, using about ¾ pound.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam the pudding for 3 hours.

  2. Serve with a sauce made from the same ingredients.

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. Plum + apricottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together284 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Apricot + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Plum + almondtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together211 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Honey + apricottop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-phenethyl alcohol (floral).

  5. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Suet paste
Forms the rich, tender crust that encloses the fruit layers.
French plums
Provide the main fruit filling, softening and becoming juicy as they steam.
Honey
Adds sweetness and a sticky moisture that binds the layers together.
Apricot jam
Adds sweetness, fruity flavour and extra moisture between the layers.
Lemon or orange juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet honey and jam.

The step that matters

Layering the basin. Paste must be thin enough to steam through and the layers evenly spread, so the pudding cooks through and the fruit and syrup distribute without leaving raw dough or dry pockets.

Swap the almond

The recipe marks almond as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (plum, honey, apricot, lemon):

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Chickpeafits about as well
  3. Pistachiofits less well
  4. Hazelnutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against plum, honey, apricot, lemon. 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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