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Dessert

French Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with suet, bread crumbs, dried fruit, lemon, sugar, eggs, milk, rum, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

French Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Combine suet, bread crumbs, raisins, currants, citron, lemon rind, nutmeg, and sugar in a large bowl.

  2. Beat the eggs, then add milk, rum, and salt to the eggs and mix the wet ingredients well.

  3. Combine the wet and dry ingredients thoroughly.

Boil and serve

  1. Place the mixture in a pudding cloth and tie securely.

  2. Boil in water for three hours.

  3. Serve hot or cold with wine sauce.

  4. Optionally, decorate with a sprig of holly and pour rum or brandy over it before serving.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture together and help it set firm as it cooks.
Bread or cracker crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the pudding body and structure.
Suet
Adds fat that gives a rich, tender texture as it melts during cooking.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy moisture throughout the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the richness of the fruit and suet.

The step that matters

Boiling the pudding cloth. The cloth must be tied securely so water cannot enter and soak the pudding, and the water should be kept gently boiling for the full three hours so the eggs and crumbs set through evenly.

Swap the currant

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

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

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

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