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Dessert

Plum Roll

A steamed roll made from flour, butter, milk, raisins, citron, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin 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 Roll

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Add baking powder and salt to the sifted flour and sift again.

  2. Rub in the butter.

  3. Add enough milk to form a soft dough.

Fill and steam

  1. Roll out the dough and sprinkle with chopped raisins and citron.

  2. Dust with cinnamon, roll up, and steam for 30 minutes.

  3. Serve warm with hard sauce.

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. Flour + raisintop 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the main structure of the dough once mixed with liquid.
Baking powder
Releases gas that lifts the dough so it rises as it steams.
Butter
Rubbed into the flour to add tenderness and richness to the dough.
Milk
Hydrates the flour so the dough becomes soft and workable.
Raisins
Add pockets of sweetness and moisture within the rolled dough.

The step that matters

Roll up and steam. The roll must be tight and sealed so the filling stays inside and the dough cooks evenly in the steam. Steaming for the full time sets the dough through without the centre remaining raw.

“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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