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Dessert

Damson Pudding

A steamed pudding made with damsons, flour, suet, sugar, milk, salt water, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Damson Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour, suet, a pinch of salt, and baking powder.

  2. Add just enough milk and salt water to form a stiff dough.

Assemble the pudding

  1. Line a well-buttered basin with the dough and cut a cover for the top.

  2. Place half of the damsons in the basin, then add the sugar, and fill with the remaining damsons.

  3. Cover with the dough lid.

Steam

  1. Tie a greased paper firmly over the top and steam for two 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. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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

Flour
Forms the structure of the dough that encloses the fruit.
Suet
Adds fat that makes the crust rich and tender as it cooks.
Baking powder
Releases gas that helps the dough rise and lighten.
Damsons
Provide the tart fruit that gives the pudding its main flavour and moisture.
Brown sugar
Sweetens the tart damsons and adds a hint of molasses flavour.

The step that matters

Sealing the paper over the basin. A loose cover lets steam escape and water seep in, so the pudding can turn soggy or dry out. A firmly tied, greased paper keeps the steam trapped around the pudding while it cooks.

“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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