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Dessert

A Plum Pudding Variation

A sweet pudding made with flour, raisins, currants, suet, brown sugar, mashed carrot, mashed potato, candied lemon peel, molasses, and citron.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

A Plum Pudding Variation

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix the flour, currants, suet, raisins, lemon peel, and brown sugar in a bowl.

  2. Stir in the mashed carrot and potato, then add the molasses.

  3. Do not add any liquid to the mixture.

  4. Let the mixture stand overnight before cooking.

Cook and serve

  1. Transfer the mixture to a pudding mold.

  2. Boil or steam for 4 hours.

  3. Serve with brandy 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. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Carrot + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,351 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  5. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together as it cooks.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich in texture.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a deeper, molasses-like flavour.
Mashed potato
Contributes moisture and body to the dense mixture.

The step that matters

Do not add any liquid to the mixture. The batter is meant to be dense and dry-mixed; the moisture comes from the mashed vegetables and fruit, and extra liquid would make the pudding soggy and loosen its structure during the long steam.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, raisin, sugar, carrot, potato, lemon, molasses):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, raisin, sugar, carrot, potato, lemon, molasses. 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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