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Dessert

English Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with bread crumbs, suet, raisins, currants, sugar, milk, eggs, cinnamon, and mace.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,390 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

English Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Combine bread crumbs and boiling milk in a bowl.

  2. Add suet, raisins, currants, sugar, beaten eggs, cinnamon, and mace. Mix well.

  3. Divide the mixture into two or three bags.

Cook and store

  1. Boil the bags for three hours.

  2. Store the pudding for weeks, reheating when needed.

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

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

  2. Cinnamon + macetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Soak up the boiling milk to form the body of the pudding.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Eggs
Bind the mixture together and help it set as it cooks.
Raisins
Provide sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Currants
Add concentrated fruity sweetness and chewy texture.
Granulated sugar
Adds sweetness and helps keep the pudding moist.

The step that matters

Boil the bags for three hours. The pudding must cook at a steady boil for the full time so the eggs set and the starches gelatinise. Too little heat or time leaves it wet and dense.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, raisin, currant, sugar, milk, egg, cinnamon. 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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