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Dessert

Pudding

A fruit pudding made with butter, sugar, eggs, milk, flour, brandy, nutmeg, and dried fruit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Beat in the yolks until smooth and light.

  3. Add the milk, alternating with the flour and beaten egg whites.

  4. Stir in the brandy, nutmeg, and mixed fruit, then mix thoroughly.

Cook

  1. Wring out a pudding cloth in hot water, flouring the inside.

  2. Pour in the mixture.

  3. Boil for five 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air and give the pudding a rich, tender body.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the batter into a smooth, set structure.
Egg whites
Beaten in to lighten the batter and add structure as the pudding cooks.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the pudding together as it sets.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps create a light, creamed texture with the butter.
Mixed dried fruit
Adds chewy texture and sweetness; dredging in flour helps keep it suspended in the batter.

The step that matters

Beat in the yolks until smooth and light. Creaming butter and sugar then beating in yolks traps air and emulsifies the fat, so the batter stays smooth. Under-beating leaves a dense, greasy pudding, while a batter that is not well combined can split and bake unevenly.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Clovefits less well
  4. Allspicefits less well

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