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Pudding Paste

A fruit pudding made by rolling a stiff paste over fruit and boiling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Pudding Paste

Ingredients

Directions

Make the paste

  1. Beat the egg with the suet in a bowl.

  2. Add the flour and mix well.

  3. Gradually add cold water until the mixture forms a stiff paste.

  4. Flour a clean surface and a rolling pin, then roll out the paste to the desired size.

Fill and wrap

  1. Place the rolled paste in a buttered basin, allowing it to hang over the edges.

  2. Roll out a small piece of paste to cover the fruit, then place it on top.

  3. Fold the overhanging paste over the top and press it to seal without cracks.

  4. Butter or flour a cloth and tie it over the basin.

Boil and serve

  1. Boil for 2 hours.

  2. After boiling, cut a round from the top crust, stir in sugar to taste, and replace the crust.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Suet
Adds fat that keeps the paste tender and rich as it cooks.
Flour
Forms the structure of the paste so it holds its shape while boiling.
Egg
Binds the suet and flour together into a cohesive dough.

The step that matters

Sealing the paste over the fruit. If the overhanging paste is not pressed closed without cracks, water can enter the basin during boiling and make the pudding soggy. A tight seal keeps the filling moist and the crust intact.

“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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