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Dessert

English Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with currants, raisins, beef suet, flour, nutmeg, cloves, and sweet milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

English Plum Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Mix

  1. In a large bowl, combine the dried currants, raisins, chopped beef suet, flour, nutmeg, and ground cloves, then mix the ingredients thoroughly.

  2. Gradually add sweet milk until the mixture is moist enough to stir.

Steam and serve

  1. Transfer the mixture to a pudding mold and steam for fifteen minutes.

  2. Serve with wine or sauce.

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 + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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 + 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

Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding rich and moist as it steams.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the fruit and suet together.
Dried currants
Contribute concentrated sweetness and chewy texture.
Raisins
Contribute concentrated sweetness and chewy texture.
Sweet milk
Moistens the dry ingredients so they hold together.

The step that matters

Adding the sweet milk. Milk should be added gradually so the mixture becomes moist enough to stir without turning wet or sticky. Too much liquid at once makes the pudding heavy and dense after steaming.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, beef, flour, nutmeg, clove, milk):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, beef, flour, nutmeg, clove, 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 →

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