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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with raisins, currants, suet, sugar, candied peel, flour, bread crumbs, eggs, milk, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. In a basin, combine raisins, currants, suet, sugar, candied peels, citron, flour, bread crumbs, and nutmeg. Mix in the eggs and a little milk until well combined.

Boil and serve

  1. Grease a pudding mold and pour the mixture into it. Cover with a sheet of paper and tie the mold in a cloth.

  2. Place the mold in a large pot of boiling water and boil for 4½ hours.

  3. Alternatively, tie the mixture in a floured pudding cloth and shape it in a round-bottomed basin, boiling for the same time.

  4. Once done, remove from the cloth or mold and place on a dish. Sprinkle with powdered sugar 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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Lemon + orangetop 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. Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Raisin + orangetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,684 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 set the pudding structure as it cooks.
Beef suet
Adds fat and richness, keeping the pudding moist during long boiling.
All-purpose flour
Provides starch that thickens and gives the pudding its body.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and add a light, tender crumb to the mixture.
Malaga raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown slightly on its surface.

The step that matters

Keeping the mold tied and the water boiling for the full 4½ hours. A tight cloth or cover keeps steam in and water out, so the pudding cooks gently and stays moist. Letting the water drop below a boil or the cloth loosen can make the pudding soggy or uneven.

Swap the currant

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

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

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