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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with bread crumbs, milk, suet, eggs, spices, dried fruit, and candied peel, finished with brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 20 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,536 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Pour scalding milk over the bread crumbs to moisten them.

  2. Add flour, brown sugar, salt, chopped suet, beaten eggs, cinnamon, ginger, allspice, and cloves to the mixture.

  3. Stir in the raisins, currants, citron, candied peels, and almonds or pecans.

  4. Dissolve baking soda in a little hot water and add to the mixture.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil the pudding for four hours.

  2. Once cooked, stick blanched and split almonds all over the pudding.

  3. Pour brandy or whiskey over the pudding and ignite it 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. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Ginger + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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 scalded milk to form the moist body of the pudding.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set as it cooks.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it steams.
Raisins
Provide sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a molasses note that deepens the color.
Baking soda
Reacts with the mixture to help lighten its texture as it cooks.

The step that matters

Boil the pudding for four hours. A pudding this dense needs a long, steady simmer so the eggs set fully and the suet and crumbs cook through. Too little time leaves it wet and heavy, and a hard boil can break the surface and dry the edges.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, flour, sugar, egg, cinnamon, allspice. 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 plum pudding recipes

English 165Christmas 156Sauce 71Eggless 34Baked 33Vegetable 19 See all 649 →

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