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Dessert

Fruit Pudding, Rum Sauce

A baked fruit pudding made with cherries, plums, apricots, and a sweet rum sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Plum and apricot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 284 recipes. Both carry damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Fruit Pudding, Rum Sauce

Oven, in the book's wordsA very hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a very hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the mold

  1. Butter a 4-inch high pudding mold that holds 1 quart.

  2. Line the mold with dumpling batter.

  3. In a bowl, combine cherries, plums, apricots, and powdered sugar. Mix the fruit mixture well.

  4. Pour the fruit mixture into the mold.

Make the syrup and bake

  1. In a saucepan, combine water and granulated sugar. Boil the mixture for 5 minutes.

  2. Fill the mold with the syrup.

  3. Place the mold in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 30 minutes.

  4. Keep the pudding warm after removing it from the oven.

Make the rum sauce and serve

  1. For the rum sauce, combine water and granulated sugar in a saucepan. Add caramel. Bring the sauce to a boil.

  2. Stir in corn-starch diluted in cold water. Cook the sauce for 2 minutes.

  3. Remove the sauce from heat. Mix in the rum. Strain the sauce into a bowl.

  4. Turn the pudding onto a dessert dish.

  5. Pour the sauce over the pudding before serving.

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 + apricottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together284 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Apricot + rumtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together149 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Plum + rumtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27 recipes

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

  4. Butter + rumtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,007 recipes

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

  5. Plum + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together124 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Dumpling batter
Forms the outer case that holds the fruit and syrup together while baking.
Corn-starch
Thickens the rum sauce so it coats the pudding smoothly.
Butter
Greases the mold so the pudding releases cleanly and adds richness to the crust.
Jamaica rum
Adds aroma and warm flavor to the finished sauce.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the syrup and sauce and helps them brown slightly as they cook.

The step that matters

Thickening the rum sauce. Cornstarch must be stirred into a boiling liquid and cooked briefly to gelatinize and thicken. Adding the rum after removing it from heat keeps its aroma from cooking off.

Swap the plum

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, apricot, sugar, corn, rum):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Pineapplefits about as well
  4. Plumthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, apricot, sugar, corn, rum. 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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