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Dessert

Prune or Damson Pudding

A baked pudding made with eggs, milk, flour, ginger, prunes, and served with melted butter.

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 ↓

Prune or Damson Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs in a bowl.

  2. Gradually mix in the milk.

  3. Add enough flour to create a batter.

  4. Stir in the salt and ginger.

  5. Mix in the prunes.

Cook and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a pudding bag.

  2. Boil the bag for at least 1 hour.

  3. Serve with melted butter poured over the pudding.

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. Flour + buttertop 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. Flour + gingertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and help the pudding set as it cooks.
Flour
Thickens the liquid so the mixture holds together as a batter.
Milk
Provides the liquid that turns the batter into a moist pudding.
Prunes
Add sweetness, moisture and a rich, dark flavour to the pudding.

The step that matters

Boil the bag for at least 1 hour. The pudding sets through gentle, sustained heat in the boiling water. Cooking it for less time can leave the centre wet and unset, so the full hour matters.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

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