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Dessert

Excellent Plum-pudding, Made Without Eggs

An eggless plum pudding made with flour, raisins, currants, suet, brown sugar, mashed carrot and potatoes, treacle, and candied peel.

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 ↓

Excellent Plum-pudding, Made Without Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pudding

  1. Mix the flour, currants, suet, and sugar together in a large bowl.

  2. Stir in the mashed carrot and potatoes until well combined.

  3. Add the treacle, lemon peel, and citron, mixing thoroughly.

  4. Tie the mixture loosely in a cloth.

Steam

  1. Place it in a basin without filling it completely.

  2. Steam the pudding for 2 to 2½ hours, depending on size.

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. Potato + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the pudding together as it cooks.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding rich and tender.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps retain moisture in the pudding.
Mashed carrot
Adds moisture and body in place of eggs.
Mashed potatoes
Adds moisture and body, helping bind the mixture without eggs.
Treacle
Adds sweetness, depth of flavour, and moisture.

The step that matters

Leave room in the basin. The pudding swells as it steams, so filling the basin completely can cause it to be squeezed or overflow. Steaming for the full time lets the centre cook through, and larger puddings need the longer end of the range.

Swap the currant

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

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

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