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Dessert

Plum Pudding Without Eggs

A steamed plum pudding made with bread crumbs, flour, suet, raisins, molasses, sweet milk, baking soda, salt, cloves, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Plum Pudding Without Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Butter an earthen dish.

Mix

  1. Combine bread crumbs, flour, suet, raisins, molasses, sweet milk, baking soda, salt, cloves, and cinnamon in a bowl, and mix well until combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into the prepared dish.

Cook

  1. Cook for 5 hours in an Aladdin Pail.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Provide the bulk and body of the pudding, absorbing the liquid to form a soft crumb.
Flour
Adds structure so the pudding holds together once cooked.
Suet
Adds richness and fat, giving a tender, moist texture.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color and a deep flavor.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses acid to lighten the pudding and help it rise.

The step that matters

Cook for 5 hours in an Aladdin Pail. Long, gentle steaming sets the crumb and softens the suet without drying the pudding. Because this record does not state the water level or heat, check that the vessel is kept at a steady simmer throughout.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Clovethe original
  3. Cardamomfits about as well
  4. Allspicefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, flour, raisin, molasses, milk, 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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