Skip to main content
Dessert

To Make a Prune Pudding

A pudding made from milk, eggs, flour, ginger, and prunes, boiled in a cloth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
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. Beat the egg yolks with ½ pint of milk and flour until smooth.

  2. Add salt and ginger, then gradually mix in the remaining milk.

  3. Fold in the egg whites gently.

  4. Add the prunes and mix well.

Cook and serve

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

  2. Serve with melted butter poured over the pudding.

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
Yolks bind the batter and whites, folded in, lighten the pudding's texture.
Flour
Starch thickens the batter and gives the cooked pudding its body.
Milk
Provides liquid that hydrates the flour and keeps the pudding moist.
Prunes
Add sweetness, dark color and a soft, moist texture to the pudding.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites gently. Whites hold air that helps lighten the pudding. Stirring vigorously knocks that air out, leaving a denser result.

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.

More prune pudding recipes

Norwegian 7Steamed 5 See all 210 →

You might also like

Ginger CookiesGinger Cookies213 recipesGinger CakeGinger Cake93 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipesSoft Ginger CakeSoft Ginger Cake56 recipes