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Dessert

Fruit Pudding

A steamed fruit pudding made with fruit, sugar, flour, butter or lard, and a rolled‑out crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Peach and apple match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 303 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Fruit Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Place fruit in a tin basin.

  2. Sprinkle sugar over the fruit.

  3. Add a little water.

  4. If using peaches, peel them and add them whole.

Make the crust

  1. In a bowl, mix flour, butter or lard, salt, and baking powder.

  2. Add water or milk to the mixture to form a dough.

  3. Roll the dough out.

  4. Cover the fruit with the rolled-out crust.

Steam and serve

  1. Cover the basin with another basin to allow the crust to rise.

  2. Set the basin on the stove to steam as the fruit cooks.

  3. Serve warm with cream and sugar.

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. Peach + appletop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together303 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Peach + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together781 recipes

    Shared aroma: phellandrene (minty).

  4. Apple + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

Fruit
Provides the main filling, with its juices softening as it cooks and sweetening the pudding.
All-purpose flour
Forms the dough structure that holds the crust together while it steams.
Butter or lard
Adds fat that tenderises the crust and keeps it short.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking so the crust rises and becomes light.

The step that matters

Covering the basin to steam. The covered basin traps steam so the crust rises and cooks through while the fruit softens. If the cover is loose, steam escapes and the crust can turn dense and dry.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peach, sugar, flour, butter, 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.

More fruit pudding recipes

Steamed 91Boiled 17Cold 14English 14Baked 12Tapioca 11 See all 210 →

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