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Dessert

Baked Plum-pudding

A baked pudding made from stale bread, milk, currants, raisins, citron, spices, wine, eggs, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Baked Plum-pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Prepare the ingredients a day in advance and cover them closely.

  2. Boil the milk and pour it hot over the grated bread; cover and let steep for 1 hour.

Make the pudding

  1. Mix the butter, sugar, spices, and citron into the bread mixture once it has steeped.

  2. Add the white wine and stir well.

  3. Gradually stir in the beaten eggs once the mixture is cool.

  4. Dredge the raisins and currants with flour, then fold them into the mixture.

  5. Transfer the mixture to a buttered dish and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 2 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve warm with wine sauce or a mixture of wine and sugar.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  5. Mace + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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 help it set into a firm, sliceable pudding when baked.
Stale bread
Forms the body of the pudding and soaks up the milk for a soft, tender crumb.
Milk
Soaks into the bread and provides moisture so the pudding stays tender as it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving a softer texture and a rounder flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and contributes to browning on the baked surface.
Currants and raisins
Add sweetness, chewy texture and fruity flavour throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Gradually stir in the beaten eggs once the mixture is cool. Adding eggs to a very hot mixture can scramble them and leave lumps. Cooling the base first lets the eggs blend smoothly and set evenly when baked.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, milk, currant, raisin, nutmeg, cinnamon, sugar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, currant, raisin, nutmeg, cinnamon, 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

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