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Dessert

Persimmon Pudding

A baked pudding made from ripe persimmons, water, sweet milk, eggs, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Persimmon and flour share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 63 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Persimmon Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the persimmons

  1. Remove the pits from the persimmons and wash them clean.

  2. Add a little water and rub the persimmons through a sieve to remove skins and seeds.

Bake and serve

  1. Stir in the sweet milk, eggs, and flour until well combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into a deep pan and bake at 350°F (175°C) for one hour.

  3. Let it cool before serving.

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. Persimmon + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together63 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Persimmon + milktop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Persimmons
Provide the main flavor and pulp that gives the pudding its body and sweetness.
Eggs
Set the mixture as it bakes, giving the pudding structure and a firm, custardy texture.
Flour
Thickens the mixture and helps it hold together as it bakes.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture and richness, softening the texture of the baked pudding.

The step that matters

Rubbing the persimmons through a sieve. Skins and seeds left in the pulp would give a gritty, uneven texture. Pressing the soft fruit through a sieve produces a smooth base that bakes evenly into a uniform pudding.

Swap the persimmon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Persimmonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, 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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