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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A steamed plum pudding made with raisins, currants, molasses, suet, milk, citron, and spices, finished with walnuts and brandy.

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 ↓

Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix all dry ingredients except baking soda.

  2. Slowly add milk to the dry mixture.

  3. Sift baking soda into the warmed molasses and quickly add to the rest.

  4. Pour the mixture into an oiled melon mold.

Steam and finish

  1. Steam for 4 hours.

  2. Once done, cover with English walnuts, pressing them in about ½ inch.

  3. Pour a glass of brandy over the pudding and ignite it.

  4. Serve while the brandy is burning with hard sauce flavored with nutmeg, cinnamon, and wine.

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 + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  4. Cinnamon + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Raisin + molassestop 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

Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it steams.
Molasses
Provides sweetness, dark color, and moisture to the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to produce gas that lightens the pudding.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps bind the dry ingredients into a batter.

The step that matters

Sift baking soda into the warmed molasses and quickly add to the rest.. Baking soda reacts with acid in the molasses to release gas. If the batter sits too long before steaming, much of that lift is lost, so the mixture should go into the mold promptly.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, cinnamon, molasses, milk):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, cinnamon, molasses, milk. 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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