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Dessert

Baked Plum-pudding

A baked dessert made from grated stale bread, milk, currants, raisins, citron, spices, sugar, butter, wine, and eggs.

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

Baked Plum-pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Prepare the ingredients a day in advance.

  2. Cover the ingredients closely.

  3. Boil the milk.

  4. Pour the hot milk over the grated bread.

  5. Cover and let steep for 1 hour.

Make the batter

  1. Mix the butter, sugar, spices, and citron into the bread mixture after it has cooled.

  2. Stir in the white wine.

  3. Gradually add the beaten eggs.

  4. Dredge the raisins and currants with flour.

  5. Fold the dredged raisins and currants into the mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered dish.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 2 hours.

  3. Serve warm with wine sauce or a mixture of wine and sugar.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 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. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  5. Mace + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread
Soaked in hot milk, it absorbs liquid and forms the pudding's soft, custard-like body.
Eggs
Set during baking to bind the pudding and give it structure and richness.
Milk
Hydrates the bread and adds moisture so the pudding bakes tender rather than dry.
Butter
Adds fat for a richer, smoother crumb and flavor.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown lightly as it bakes.
Raisins and currants
Dried fruit adds chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Folding in the dredged fruit. Tossing raisins and currants in flour helps them stay suspended instead of sinking to the bottom. Eggs need to be added gradually so the batter does not curdle or separate.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, milk, currant, raisin, nutmeg, cinnamon, sugar):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, currant, raisin, nutmeg, cinnamon, sugar. 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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