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Dessert

Plum Pudding, English

A steamed pudding made with currants, raisins, suet, bread crumbs, citron, eggs, milk, cider, sugar, salt, mace, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour 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 ↓

Plum Pudding, English

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the pudding

  1. In a large bowl, combine currants, raisins, suet, bread crumbs, citron, sugar, salt, mace, and nutmeg.

  2. In another bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  3. Add the egg whites to the mixture and gently fold in.

  4. Stir in the milk and sweet cider until well combined.

Boil and serve

  1. Transfer the mixture into a cloth bag.

  2. Boil for 7 hours, turning it several times while cooking.

  3. Serve with a rich sauce.

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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Currant + cidertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together500 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

  4. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Beef + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whipped whites add lift and help bind the pudding into a light, tender structure.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the milk and cider, giving the pudding body and a soft, moist crumb.
Suet
Adds fat that enriches the pudding and keeps the crumb moist and rich.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Currants
Add fruity sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whipped whites hold air, and overmixing or stirring vigorously knocks it out. Gentle folding keeps the pudding light instead of dense.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, flour, beef, bread, egg, milk, cider. 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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