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Dessert

Fruit Pudding

A steamed pudding made with stale bread, raisins, lemon rind, candied orange peel, eggs, cream, and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Fruit Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard base

  1. Melt the sugar in a saucepan, add the milk, and stir until the sugar is dissolved.

  2. Beat the egg yolks and pour the hot milk mixture into them.

  3. Pour the mixture over the bread and let it soak for 10 minutes.

Assemble and steam

  1. Add the remaining ingredients and mix well.

  2. Pour into a buttered mold and steam for 1½ hours.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Raisin + orangetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,684 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread
Provides the body of the pudding, soaking up the custard so it holds together when steamed.
Egg yolks
Enrich and set the custard, giving the pudding a tender, firm texture as it steams.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, carrying the sugar and softening the bread.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps dissolve into the milk for an even custard.
Cream
Adds fat that makes the pudding richer and smoother in texture.

The step that matters

Pour the hot milk into the egg yolks. Adding hot liquid to yolks too quickly can scramble them. Pouring slowly while beating tempers the yolks so the custard stays smooth and thickens evenly when steamed.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, sugar, milk, lemon, orange, egg, cream):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sugar, milk, lemon, orange, egg, cream. 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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