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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A baked pudding made from soaked crackers, milk, eggs, raisins, sugar, butter, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,377 recipes. Both carry alpha-terpineol, which smells lilac, floral. The science ↓

Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the pudding

  1. Soak the crackers overnight in 3 pints of milk.

  2. In the morning, add 1 pint of milk, eggs, raisins, sugar, salt, and nutmeg, and stir gently.

  3. Pour into a baking dish.

Bake

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 4 to 5 hours.

Make the sauce and finish

  1. Cream together ½ cup of butter and 1 cup of sugar for the sauce.

  2. Pour the sauce over the pudding.

  3. Add ⅓ cup of wine.

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 + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  4. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

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

What each ingredient does

Crackers
Soak up the milk and give the pudding its body and structure.
Eggs
Set the custard as they cook, binding the pudding together.
Milk
Provides moisture that softens the crackers and keeps the pudding tender.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel in the sauce.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the sauce cream and hold together.

The step that matters

Soaking the crackers overnight. Crackers need time to fully absorb the milk so they soften evenly. Dry pockets left in the mixture can stay chewy or streaky after baking.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, egg, sugar, nutmeg, butter, wine):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, sugar, nutmeg, butter, wine. 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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