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Dessert

Date Pudding

A steamed pudding made with dates, flour, suet, sugar, nutmeg, and milk or water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Date Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare a saucepan of boiling water.

  2. Grease a basin.

  3. Stove the dates.

  4. Cut the dates into small pieces.

  5. Shred and chop the suet.

  6. Mix all the dry ingredients together.

Make the pudding

  1. Add milk or water.

  2. Beat the mixture well.

  3. Pour the mixture into the greased basin.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam for 2.5 to 3 hours.

  2. Turn out onto a hot dish.

  3. Serve with white sweet 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 + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Dates + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together194 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Dates + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together470 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

Dates
Add moisture and natural sweetness, giving the pudding its soft, dense body.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together as it sets.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding rich and tender as it steams.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a deeper, molasses-like flavour.
Milk or water
Hydrates the flour so the dry ingredients form a spoonable batter.

The step that matters

Steam for the full 2.5 to 3 hours. Steam is gentle, even heat that slowly sets the flour and fat into a moist, firm pudding. Cutting the steaming short leaves the centre wet and heavy, because the starch has not fully gelatinised and the batter has not set through.

Swap the dates

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Datesthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, nutmeg, milk. 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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