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Dessert

Egoless Plum Pudding

A steamed plum pudding made without eggs, using bread crumbs, rye flour, spices, suet, raisins, apple, molasses, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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 ↓

Egoless Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix the dry ingredients thoroughly.

  2. Add the suet and prepared fruit, then mix well.

Make the batter

  1. Gradually add the molasses and milk while stirring continuously.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam for 2½ hours.

  2. Serve with sauce.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Cinnamon + appletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Clove + appletop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Rye flour
Provides the bulk and structure of the pudding.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, and depth of flavor.
Baking powder
Releases gas that helps the pudding rise and become light.
Bread crumbs
Absorbs liquid and adds softness to the texture.

The step that matters

Gradually add the molasses and milk while stirring continuously.. Adding liquid slowly while stirring keeps the batter smooth and evenly hydrated, so lumps do not form and the flour absorbs the liquid uniformly.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, rye, flour, clove, cinnamon, raisin, molasses):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Orangefits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, rye, flour, clove, cinnamon, raisin, molasses. 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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