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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with suet, raisins, currants, flour, eggs, and spices, served with a butter‑sugar sauce.

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

Make the pudding

  1. Chop the beef suet until it resembles butter.

  2. In a large bowl, combine the suet, raisins, currants, sugar, flour, and beaten eggs. Mix well, then gradually add the brandy, rose water, citron, nutmeg, and cinnamon.

  3. Tie the mixture tightly in a floured cloth.

  4. Boil the pudding for 4 hours, ensuring constant boiling.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, beat the butter and sugar together until creamy. Add a little wine and nutmeg to the butter mixture and mix well.

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 + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

  4. Currant + rosetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together494 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Raisin + brandytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,768 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 structure as they set during boiling.
Beef suet
Adds richness and moisture, keeping the pudding tender as it cooks.
Flour
Provides the body that holds the pudding together.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat, giving it a creamy texture.

The step that matters

Boil the pudding for 4 hours, ensuring constant boiling. The pudding is cooked by steady boiling water. If the water stops boiling, the pudding cooks unevenly and can turn heavy. Keep the pot at a full boil and top up with hot water as it evaporates.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, raisin, sugar, flour, egg, brandy, rose):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Currantthe original
  4. Lemonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, raisin, sugar, flour, egg, brandy, rose. 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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