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Dessert

Pudding of Prunes or French Plums

A steamed pudding made from prunes, flour, milk, and eggs, served with pudding sauce.

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 ↓

Pudding of Prunes or French Plums

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the prunes

  1. Scald the prunes and let them swell in hot water until soft, then drain and remove the stones.

  2. Spread the prunes on a large dish and dredge them with flour.

Make the batter

  1. Gradually stir ⅓ cup of milk into 1 cup of fine flour to make a smooth batter.

  2. Beat the eggs lightly and stir them into the quart of milk alternately with the batter.

  3. Add the prunes gradually and mix everything together.

Boil and serve

  1. Tie the pudding in a cloth dipped in boiling water and dredged with flour, leaving room for it to swell.

  2. Put the pudding into boiling water and boil for 2 hours without removing it until ready to serve.

  3. Serve with pudding sauce.

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 + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + saucetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Milk + saucetop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Prunes
Provide the main fruit body and sweet, soft texture in the pudding.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set into a firm, cohesive pudding.
Fine flour
Forms the batter's starch structure, giving the pudding body as it cooks.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and eggs, adding moisture and a tender texture.

The step that matters

Leaving room in the cloth for the pudding to swell. Flour starch gelatinises and the batter expands as it heats, so a tightly tied cloth can burst or squeeze the pudding out of shape during the long boil.

“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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