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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A boiled pudding made with bread crumbs, eggs, suet, currants, raisins, sugar, butter, spices, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. 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.

Prepare the base

  1. Rub the bread crumbs very fine.

  2. In a large bowl, mix the bread crumbs, beaten eggs, brandy, nutmeg, ground cloves, mace, and chopped suet together well.

Add the fruit and flour

  1. In another bowl, rub together the sugar and melted butter until combined.

  2. Add the sugar and butter mixture to the pudding mixture along with the currants and raisins, which should be floured beforehand.

  3. Stir in the flour until well combined.

Boil

  1. Flour the pudding bag well, fill it with the mixture, tie it tightly, and boil for 3 hours.

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. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, 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 set into a firm, sliceable pudding as they cook.
Suet
Adds fat and richness, keeping the pudding moist and tender as it steams.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the pudding body and structure.
Flour
Thickens the mixture and helps hold the fruit evenly suspended.
Currants
Provide chewy texture and concentrated sweetness.
Raisins
Provide chewy texture and concentrated sweetness.

The step that matters

Tying the pudding bag. The bag must be floured and tied tightly so the pudding holds its shape and water cannot enter while it boils. Flour helps the cloth release the pudding cleanly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, egg, brandy, nutmeg, clove, sugar, butter):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, egg, brandy, nutmeg, clove, sugar, butter. 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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