Skip to main content
Dessert

Plum Pudding

A boiled plum pudding made with raisins, currants, suet, bread crumbs, flour, brown sugar, lemon rind, nutmeg, eggs, candied peel, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Raisin and flour 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 Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the batter

  1. Mix the dry ingredients: raisins, currants, suet, bread crumbs, flour, brown sugar, lemon rind, and nutmeg.

  2. Beat the eggs with the brandy and pour over the dry mixture.

  3. Thoroughly mix all ingredients together.

Boil and serve

  1. Boil in a basin or mold for 6 hours at the time of making.

  2. Boil again for 6 hours when ready to serve.

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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set firm as it cooks.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender.
Stale bread crumbs
Soak up liquid and give the pudding body and structure.
Flour
Provides starch that thickens and gives the pudding its firm shape.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a deeper, molasses-like flavour.
Raisins
Add sweetness, chewiness and moisture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Long boil at the time of making. The pudding needs a full 6-hour boil so the eggs and flour cook through and the dense mixture sets. Undercooking leaves it wet and heavy in the centre.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, bread, flour, sugar, lemon, nutmeg, egg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, bread, flour, sugar, lemon, nutmeg, egg. 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 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes