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Dessert

English Plum Pudding

A rich, spiced pudding made with eggs, flour, raisins, currants, sultanas, sugar, breadcrumbs, suet, candied peel, spices, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

English Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Stone and cut the raisins without chopping them.

Make the batter

  1. Mix all the dry ingredients in a large bowl.

  2. Beat the yolks of the eggs and strain them into the mixture.

  3. Beat the egg whites until stiff and fold them in last.

Boil the pudding

  1. Boil the pudding for 6 to 8 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  4. Raisin + orangetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,684 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and add richness, with whipped whites lightening the pudding.
Bread crumbs
Provide the body and structure that holds the fruit and suet together.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a molasses-like depth of flavour.
Muscatel raisins
Supply chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the pudding.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavour, and helps preserve the pudding.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites last. Whipped whites trap air that lightens the heavy batter. Folding gently keeps that air in, while overmixing would deflate it and leave a denser pudding.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, flour, raisin, sugar, bread, orange, lemon):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Cranberryfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, flour, raisin, sugar, bread, orange, lemon. 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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