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Dessert

Plum Pudding Without Eggs

A steamed plum pudding made with bread crumbs, flour, suet, raisins, molasses, sweet milk, baking soda, salt, cloves, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Plum Pudding Without Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Grease an earthen dish.

Mix and cook

  1. Combine bread crumbs, flour, suet, raisins, molasses, sweet milk, baking soda, salt, cloves, and cinnamon in a bowl, then mix well until combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into the greased dish.

  3. Cover and cook for 5 hours in an Aladdin Pail.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Provide bulk and a soft, absorbent body in place of eggs.
All-purpose flour
Gives the pudding structure as it cooks and sets.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich in texture.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark colour and moisture.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses to lighten the pudding and help it rise.

The step that matters

Cover and cook for 5 hours in an Aladdin Pail. Long, gentle steaming in a covered vessel keeps the pudding moist and lets the starch and crumbs set evenly. Lifting the cover or cooking too hot can leave the pudding dry or heavy in the centre.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, flour, raisin, molasses, milk, cinnamon):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Clovethe original
  3. Cardamomfits about as well
  4. Allspicefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, flour, raisin, molasses, milk, cinnamon. 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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