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Dessert

Date Pudding

A steamed pudding made with sour milk, sugar or molasses, dates, and spices, topped with a sweet egg sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Date Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine sour milk, sugar or molasses, butter, baking soda, and spices.

  2. Stir in chopped dates and enough flour to make a stiff batter.

Steam

  1. Transfer the mixture to a greased pudding mold and steam for 2 hours.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, beat 2 eggs with a pinch of salt until light.

  2. Gradually add 2 cups of sugar until foamy.

  3. Stir in 2-3 tablespoons of boiling water and 1 tablespoon of vanilla.

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

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Milk + datestop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together470 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Dates
Provide the bulk of the sweetness, body and moist, chewy texture in the pudding.
Flour
Gives the batter enough structure to hold its shape while steaming.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk to produce gas that lightens and raises the pudding.
Sour milk
Its acidity activates the baking soda and adds moisture and tang.
Sugar or molasses
Sweetens the pudding and adds moisture and a deeper flavor.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches the pudding and softens its crumb.

The step that matters

Stir in flour to a stiff batter. Flour sets the structure as it steams. Too little leaves the pudding loose and collapsing, while too much makes it dense and heavy.

Swap the dates

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, butter, flour. 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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