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Dessert

Plum Pudding, St. George

A steamed pudding made with suet, raisins, currants, bread crumbs, candied lemon peel, sugar, flour, spices, brandy, and eggs.

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 ↓

Plum Pudding, St. George

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pudding

  1. Combine the suet, raisins, currants, bread crumbs, lemon peel, sugar, flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, brandy, and eggs in a large bowl. Mix well.

  2. Dip a strong cloth in cold water, wring it out, and spread it on a table.

  3. Butter the cloth generously with softened butter.

  4. Dredge the buttered cloth with sifted flour and shake off the excess.

  5. Place the pudding mixture in the center of the cloth, gather the edges, and tie securely.

Boil and serve

  1. Boil the wrapped pudding in a pot of water for 1.5 hours, ensuring the water remains boiling throughout.

  2. Remove the pudding from the pot, unwrap, and invert onto a serving dish.

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

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

  3. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Beef kidney suet
Adds richness and fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender as it cooks.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set firm while boiling.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the brandy and give the pudding body and structure.
Malaga raisins
Provide sweetness and chewy texture through the pudding.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown slightly at the surface.
Flour
Thickens the mixture and forms a dusted skin on the cloth that helps the pudding release.

The step that matters

Keeping the water boiling. If the water drops below a boil, the pudding cooks unevenly and can turn heavy and soggy. Steady heat lets the eggs and starch set the body of the pudding throughout.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, raisin, bread, lemon, sugar, flour, cinnamon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, raisin, bread, lemon, sugar, flour, 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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