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Dessert

Date Pudding

A steamed pudding made with suet, bread crumbs, dates, almonds, egg, and golden syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Dates and almond work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 217 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Date Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the dates and cut the almonds.

  2. Beat the egg in a bowl.

  3. Mix all the ingredients together well.

Steam

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered basin.

  2. Cover with greased paper and tie down.

  3. Boil fast for two hours, keeping the water an inch below the top of the basin.

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. Dates + almondtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together217 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Bread + datestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together100 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Bread + almondtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together858 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetylpyrazine (roast).

  5. Syrup + almondtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together746 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it steams.
Bread crumbs
Absorbs liquid and gives the pudding its body and soft structure.
Dates
Add sweetness and a soft, moist texture to the pudding.
Egg
Binds the ingredients together and helps set the pudding as it cooks.
Lyle's golden syrup
Adds sweetness and a golden flavour and moisture to the pudding.

The step that matters

Keep the water level below the basin rim while boiling. The pudding is cooked by steam and hot water around the basin. Boiling fast for two hours with the water kept an inch below the top helps it cook evenly, while stopping water from entering under the paper cover and making the pudding soggy.

Swap the almond

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, dates, egg, syrup):

  1. Pecansfits better
  2. Almondthe original
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Walnutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, dates, egg, syrup. 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.

More date pudding recipes

Steamed 8 See all 100 →

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