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Dessert

English Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with raisins, currants, suet, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg or mace, milk, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

English Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. In a large bowl, combine the raisins, currants, suet, sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg or mace.

  2. Add the milk and flour to the mixture and stir until well combined.

Steam

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

  2. Steam the pudding for about 6 hours, ensuring the water does not boil dry.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Raisin + flourtop 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. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

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

  5. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together as it steams.
Suet
Adds richness and moisture, keeping the pudding tender as it cooks.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown and develop flavor.
Milk
Moistens the dry ingredients so the flour can hydrate and set.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Currants
Add tart, concentrated fruit flavor and chewy texture throughout.

The step that matters

Keep the steaming water from boiling dry. Steaming needs a steady supply of hot vapor for about 6 hours. If the water runs out, the pudding can scorch or cook unevenly, and the texture suffers. Checking the pot periodically keeps the heat even and the pudding moist.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, milk, flour. 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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