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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A steamed suet pudding with raisins, nuts, spices, molasses, and flour, baked and served with cream or fruit juice sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 21 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the suet.

  2. Clean the fruit and nuts.

  3. Dredge the fruit with ½ cup of flour.

Make the batter

  1. Mix suet, brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and baking powder with the flour.

  2. Combine baking soda with molasses.

  3. Beat the mixture vigorously.

  4. Add the well-beaten eggs, lemon juice, lemon rind, and sour milk to the mixture.

  5. Pour the wet mixture into the flour mixture.

  6. Mix the combined mixture well.

  7. Add the floured fruits and nuts.

Steam and brown

  1. Pour the mixture into a wet mold.

  2. Steam the pudding for 3 to 4 hours.

  3. Brown the steamed pudding in the oven.

Serve

  1. Serve with plain cream or a sauce made of fruit juices.

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 + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  5. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the structure of the pudding once mixed with liquids and leavening.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add richness and structure as they set.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender during steaming.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses and lemon juice to help the pudding rise.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter to give the pudding lift.
Molasses
Adds dark color, moisture, and a deep sweetness with a slight acidity.

The step that matters

Steam the pudding for 3 to 4 hours. Steaming gently cooks the batter through with moist heat, so the pudding stays tender. Letting the water boil dry or the pot drop to a low simmer can leave the center dense or underdone.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, meat, sugar, molasses, egg, cinnamon, nutmeg):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Orangefits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, meat, sugar, molasses, egg, cinnamon, nutmeg. 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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