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Dessert

English Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with eggs, flour, suet, dried fruit, molasses, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine the eggs, citron, flour, spices, suet, nutmeg, candied lemon, raisins, molasses, cream of tartar, sweet milk, currants, baking soda, brown sugar, and salt.

  2. Mix all ingredients thoroughly until well combined.

  3. Pour the mixture into a pudding mold.

Steam

  1. Steam the pudding for 4 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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + raisintop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

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

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Raisin + molassestop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Provides the starch and gluten network that gives the pudding its body.
Eggs
Bind the batter and set during steaming, giving structure.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender.
Molasses
Adds dark color, moisture and a deep, sweet flavor.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses and cream of tartar to release gas that lifts the batter.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture while helping the pudding brown.

The step that matters

Steaming the pudding. The batter needs sustained, gentle heat for the full 4 hours so the eggs and flour set through the centre. Stopping early leaves the middle dense and wet.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, flour, nutmeg, raisin, molasses, cream, milk):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, flour, nutmeg, raisin, molasses, cream, milk. 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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