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Dessert

Fruit and Custard Pudding

A baked pudding made with stewed fruit, milk, eggs, breadcrumbs, butter, sugar, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Plum and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 513 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Fruit and Custard Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Grease a pie dish.

Make the custard

  1. In a bowl, mix the breadcrumbs and fruit.

  2. Melt the butter and add it to the mixture along with sugar and cinnamon.

  3. Beat the eggs with the milk.

  4. Combine the egg mixture with the other ingredients.

  5. Pour the mixture into the dish.

Bake

  1. Bake until nicely brown.

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. Plum + cinnamontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together513 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Plum + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together406 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Sugar and cinnamon 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
Bind the mixture and help it set into a soft, custard-like texture.
Milk
Adds moisture and, with the eggs, forms the custard base.
Fine breadcrumbs
Absorb the liquid and give the pudding body and structure.
Stewed plums
Provide fruit flavour and moisture throughout the pudding.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, contributing to flavour and browning.

The step that matters

Bake until nicely brown. Egg-based custards set through gentle heat; overbaking can make them curdle, weep liquid, and turn tough. Remove once the centre is just set and the top is golden.

Swap the plum

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, sugar, cinnamon, 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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