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Dessert

Plain Plum Pudding

A steamed or boiled pudding made from bread crumbs, raisins, currants, suet, flour, sugar, spices, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Plain Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix all ingredients to make a stiff batter.

  2. If the batter is too thick, add more water.

  3. If the batter is too thin, add more flour.

  4. Stir in the baking powder.

  5. Beat well.

Cook and serve

  1. Tie the mixture loosely in a pudding cloth to allow room for swelling.

  2. Boil for 4 hours.

  3. Steam in a mold or tin basin covered with a plate for the same time.

  4. Serve with lemon pudding sauce.

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

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

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Suet
Melts during cooking to add richness and a moist, tender crumb.
Flour
Provides the starch structure that holds the pudding together as it cooks.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and help give the pudding a soft, body-filled texture.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking so the pudding rises and lightens.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps browning and a rich flavour.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Leave room for swelling when tying the cloth. The batter rises and expands as it cooks. Tying it loosely leaves space for this, while a tight cloth can restrict expansion and cause the pudding to burst or cook unevenly.

Swap the currant

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

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

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

More plum pudding recipes

English 165Christmas 156Sauce 71Eggless 34Baked 33Vegetable 19 See all 649 →

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