Name: Plum Pudding
Ingredients: 1 pint stale bread crumbs; 1 cup flour; 1 cup raisins; ½ cup suet or ½ cup butter; ½ teaspoon baking soda; ½ teaspoon cloves; ½ teaspoon cinnamon; 2 eggs; ½ cup hot water

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

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

Combine bread crumbs, flour, raisins, suet or butter, baking soda, cloves, and cinnamon in a bowl.
Add eggs and hot water, mixing until well combined.
Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

Steam and serve

Steam for 3 hours.
Serve warm.

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.

Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,189 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,075 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,390 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,341 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 structure as they set during steaming.
Stale bread crumbs: Provide the body of the pudding and absorb moisture from the liquids.
Flour: Adds structure, helping the pudding hold its shape after steaming.
Suet or butter: Adds fat, giving the pudding a rich, tender texture.
Baking soda: Reacts with the liquids to help the pudding rise and lighten.

Swap the clove

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

Nutmegfits better
Cardamomfits about as well
Clovethe original
Allspicefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, flour, raisin, butter, cinnamon, egg. 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.