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Dessert

A Fruit Pudding

A pudding made with bread crumbs, fruit, sugar, molasses, suet, spices, egg, and flour, boiled for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

A Fruit Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix the bread crumbs with hot water in a large bowl.

  2. Add the rolled fruit, brown sugar, molasses, suet, grated nutmeg, ground cloves, egg, and flour to the mixture.

  3. Sift in the baking soda last and mix well.

Cook

  1. Line a vessel with a cloth soaked in hot water and dusted with flour.

  2. Pour the mixture into the prepared vessel and boil for 5 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. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Molasses + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,483 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Soak up the hot water and give the pudding its body and moist, tender crumb.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Molasses
Adds dark color, deep sweetness and moisture.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a caramel-like depth of flavor.
Egg
Binds the mixture together so it holds its shape.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses's acidity to lighten the pudding and help it rise.

The step that matters

Lining the vessel with the floured cloth. The cloth must be well soaked and floured so the pudding does not stick and releases cleanly. Dry or unfloured cloth can bond to the surface during the long boil.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, flour, sugar, molasses, nutmeg, egg):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits about as well
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Cardamomfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, flour, sugar, molasses, nutmeg, egg. 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 fruit pudding recipes

Steamed 91Boiled 17Cold 14English 14Baked 12Tapioca 11 See all 210 →

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