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Dessert

English Plum Pudding

A steamed dessert made with raisins, currants, suet, bread crumbs, flour, sugar, preserved citrus, spices, brandy, eggs, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 ↓

English Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pour the scalded milk over the bread crumbs and let it soak.

Mix

  1. In a large bowl, mix the soaked crumbs with the remaining ingredients in the order given.

Steam

  1. Divide the mixture into four portions and place each in a pudding cloth or mold.

  2. Steam each pudding for six 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. 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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  5. Orange + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,746 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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 structure as they set during steaming.
Suet
Adds fat that gives the pudding a moist, rich texture.
Bread crumbs
Soak up the milk and give the pudding body and a tender crumb.
Flour
Provides structure so the pudding holds its shape when steamed.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown slightly at the surface.

The step that matters

Steaming for six hours. Steaming must stay gentle and continuous so the pudding cooks evenly through and sets without drying out. Letting the water boil dry or drop too low can leave the pudding uneven or dense.

Swap the currant

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

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

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