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Dessert

English Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with sugar, molasses, suet, eggs, dried fruit, spices, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

English Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine sugar, Puerto Rico molasses, suet, eggs, currants, raisins, citron, candied lemon and orange, salt, baking soda, and spices.

  2. Gradually add flour until the mixture is very thick.

  3. Work the mixture with your hands when it can no longer be stirred with a spoon.

Boil and rest

  1. Place the mixture in a cloth bag and boil for 5 hours.

  2. Let the pudding sit for a few weeks in a cool place before serving for best flavor.

Serve

  1. To serve, place the pudding in a kettle of boiling water until thoroughly warmed through.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Molasses + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the dense pudding its rich, dark character.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender as it cooks.
Eggs
Bind the fruit and flour into a cohesive mixture that holds its shape.
Flour
Provides the structure that turns the mixture into a firm, thick pudding.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses' acidity to help lighten the dense mixture.
Currants
Contribute sweetness, moisture and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Working the flour into a very thick mixture. If the mixture is too thin, the pudding can become soggy and fall apart during boiling. Stop adding flour only once it is thick enough to hold its shape when worked by hand.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, molasses, egg, raisin, lemon, orange, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, molasses, egg, raisin, lemon, orange, 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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