Skip to main content
Dessert

To a Plum-pudding

A steamed pudding made with flour, suet, spices, fruit, and alcohol.

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

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 ↓

To a Plum-pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the batter

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

  2. Beat the eggs and add them to the mixture along with the milk, cognac, and lime juice.

  3. Fold in the chopped citrons and raisins until evenly distributed.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

  2. Cover and steam for about 4 hours until cooked through.

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. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Raisin + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during steaming.
Flour
Forms the structure of the pudding as it cooks.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps form a soft, tender crumb.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Cover and steam for about 4 hours. Steaming gently and steadily cooks the pudding through without drying it out. Letting the water boil away or the steam drop can leave the pudding dense or undercooked in the centre.

Swap the lime

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Limethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, egg, raisin, milk. 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

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes