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Dessert

English Plum Pudding

A boiled pudding made with suet, bread crumbs, flour, sugar, raisins, currants, citron, almonds, eggs, nutmeg, lemon rind, brandy, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin 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 ↓

English Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pound the almonds in a mortar, reserving a few whole for decoration.

  2. Beat the eggs separately.

Mix and boil

  1. Combine all ingredients in a large bowl.

  2. Flour a cloth well and place the mixture in the center.

  3. Tie the cloth securely and boil for 8 hours.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  3. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

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

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 richness and lift to the pudding.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich during long cooking.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the pudding body and structure.
Flour
Gives the pudding structure as it sets during boiling.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown and develop flavor.
Blanched almonds
Add richness, texture and nutty flavor.

The step that matters

Tie the cloth securely and boil for 8 hours. If the cloth is loose, water can seep in and make the pudding soggy, while the cloth must allow room for the pudding to swell. A steady, gentle boil with the cloth fully submerged cooks the pudding evenly without falling apart.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, bread, flour, sugar, raisin, almond, egg. 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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