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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with raisins, currants, citron, suet, eggs, bread, milk, brandy, flour, and brown sugar.

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 ↓

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.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs until very light.

  2. Add the brown sugar and mix well.

  3. Incorporate the remaining ingredients one spoonful at a time.

Boil and serve

  1. Wash a pudding bag or cloth in boiling water and flour it well.

  2. Tie the pudding tightly with strong string, leaving space for it to swell.

  3. When the pot is boiling, dip the pudding in three or four times before leaving it in the pot.

  4. Cook the pudding for 5 hours.

  5. Serve with a rich sauce or bring it in with brandy around it and set it on fire.

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. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Raisin + brandytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,768 recipes

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

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 give the pudding its light, set structure.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Grated bread
Soaks up the milk and eggs, giving body to the pudding.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a deeper, caramel-like flavour.
Raisins
Provide chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavour, and is used to flambé the pudding for serving.

The step that matters

Tie the pudding tightly, leaving room to swell. The pudding rises and expands as it cooks. A tight tie keeps it compact and watertight, while too little room in the cloth can burst it or make it heavy.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Datesfits about as well
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, egg, bread, milk, brandy, 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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