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Dessert

Blight House Plum Pudding

A rich plum pudding made with suet, sugar, eggs, citron, almonds, currants, raisins, lemon, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and raisin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,781 recipes. Both carry 2-nonanone, which smells fruity, floral. The science ↓

Blight House Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Beat the eggs separately.

  2. Mix the sugar with the yolks, then add the creamed butter.

  3. Incorporate the egg whites, brandy, wine, and spices.

  4. Mix in the lemon juice and grated rind.

  5. Combine all the fruits without cutting the raisins, then add the cracker crumbs.

Boil and serve

  1. Grease a pudding bag well, fill it with the mixture, and tie it tightly, leaving no room for swelling.

  2. Boil the pudding for 5 hours.

  3. When serving, pour a glass of wine or brandy over it and set it on fire.

  4. Serve with hot 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. Almond + raisintop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

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

  2. Brandy + curranttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

  5. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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, with the whites incorporated, give the pudding its light structure.
Suet or butter
Adds richness and fat that gives the pudding a tender, moist crumb.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a molasses-like depth of flavour.
Cracker crumbs
Soak up liquid and provide body to hold the fruit and nuts together.
Currants and raisins
Provide sweetness, chew, and moisture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Tying the pudding bag. The bag must be tied tightly with no room for swelling, because the batter expands as it heats and boils. Loose tying can let water in or leave the pudding misshapen.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, egg, brandy, almond, raisin, lemon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, brandy, almond, raisin, lemon. 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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