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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A traditional British dessert made with suet, flour, eggs, spices, dried fruit, almonds, sugar, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, mix the suet and flour together.

  2. Add the beaten eggs, grated nutmeg, mace, cinnamon, ginger, and salt; mix well.

  3. Fold in the currants, raisins, citron peel, almonds, and loaf sugar.

  4. Stir in the brandy until well combined.

Cook

  1. Transfer the mixture to a buttered basin or mold.

  2. Boil for 1.5 hours if using a cloth; add an extra 20 minutes if using a basin.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

  5. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
All-purpose flour
Provides the starch and structure that hold the pudding together.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help set its body as it cooks.
Currants
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the pudding.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the pudding.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavor while helping to combine the mixture.

The step that matters

Boiling time for the chosen vessel. A cloth and a basin need different cooking times, so the pudding must be boiled for the stated time to cook through. Cooking too briefly can leave the center set poorly, while the added time in a basin allows heat to reach the dense center.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, egg, nutmeg, mace, cinnamon, ginger, raisin):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, egg, nutmeg, mace, cinnamon, ginger, raisin. 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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