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Dessert

Date Pudding

A steamed or boiled pudding made from dates, suet, flour, and salt, moistened with milk or water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Date Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Mix

  1. Mix the dates, suet, flour, and salt in a bowl.

  2. Add enough milk or water to moisten the mixture slightly.

Basin and shape

  1. Transfer the mixture to a well-greased basin.

  2. Steam or boil for 2 to 3 hours.

  3. Shape into a roly-poly.

  4. Wrap in a cloth.

Cook

  1. Boil gently for 1½ hours.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Dates + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 sweetness and moisture, giving the pudding its body and flavour.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding tender and rich as it cooks.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together as its starch sets.
Milk or water
Moistens the flour so the mixture binds into a dough.

The step that matters

Moisten the mixture only slightly. Flour starch absorbs liquid and sets when heated. Too much milk or water makes the dough sticky and the cooked pudding heavy and dense, so add liquid gradually.

Swap the dates

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, 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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