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Damson Pudding Another Wav

A fruit pudding made with cream, eggs, flour, damsons, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Damson Pudding Another Wav

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, combine the cream or milk, eggs, flour, salt, and cinnamon. Whisk until well mixed.

  2. Rub the damsons through a fine sieve to create a pulp.

  3. Add enough pulp to the mixture to make it slightly thicker than batter.

  4. Sweeten the mixture to your taste.

Boil and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered basin and cover it with a floured cloth, tying it securely.

  2. Boil the pudding for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

  3. To serve, turn the pudding out of the basin and drizzle melted butter over it.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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
Set the pudding into a firm, custard-like structure as they cook.
Flour
Thickens the batter so the pudding holds its shape after boiling.
Cream or milk
Adds moisture and richness, giving the pudding a soft, tender texture.
Damsons
Add tart fruit flavour and extra body to the batter through their pulp.

The step that matters

Adding the damson pulp. Too much pulp makes the batter too loose to set, while too little leaves the fruit flavour weak. The mixture should be only slightly thicker than batter before it is tied and boiled.

Swap the cinnamon

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonthe original
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Jalapenofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, egg, flour, sugar, 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.

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