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Dessert

Plain Plum Pudding

A traditional plum pudding made with raisins, currants, suet, bread crumbs, almonds, candied peel, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,781 recipes. Both carry 2-nonanone, which smells fruity, floral. The science ↓

Plain Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ingredients

  1. Stone the raisins and clean the currants well.

  2. Chop the beef suet finely.

  3. Grate the bread into crumbs.

  4. Pound the almonds and shred the candied peel.

Mix and boil

  1. Mix all ingredients thoroughly and moisten with milk.

  2. Put the mixture into one large mold or three small molds.

  3. Boil the large mold for 4 to 5 hours.

  4. Boil the small molds for 3 hours.

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 + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Beef + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  5. Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Provide the bulk and structure that hold the pudding together.
Beef suet
Adds fat and richness, keeping the pudding moist and tender as it cooks.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Currants
Add tart, concentrated fruit flavor and chewy texture.
Milk
Moistens the dry ingredients so they bind into a cohesive mixture.

The step that matters

Boil the large mold for 4 to 5 hours. Long, steady boiling cooks the dense mixture through to the center. Cooking too briefly leaves it heavy and underdone, while the gentle heat keeps the fruit and suet soft rather than dry.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, beef, bread, almond, milk):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, beef, bread, almond, 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

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