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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with flour, raisins, currants, suet, brown sugar, mashed carrot, mashed potatoes, treacle, candied lemon peel, and candied citron.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 ↓

Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix the flour, currants, suet, and brown sugar together in a large bowl.

  2. Stir in the mashed carrot and potatoes until well combined.

  3. Add the treacle and candied lemon peel, mixing thoroughly without adding any liquid.

Boil and serve

  1. Tie the mixture loosely in a cloth or place it in a basin without filling it completely.

  2. Boil the pudding for 4 hours.

  3. Serve with brandy 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Carrot + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,351 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  5. Potato + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the structure that holds the pudding together as it steams.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding rich and tender during long cooking.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and deepens the colour and flavour.
Currants
Add concentrated fruit sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Mashed carrot
Adds moisture and body, keeping the pudding soft and dense.
Treacle
Adds deep sweetness and a dark colour with a molasses-like flavour.

The step that matters

Tie the mixture loosely. The pudding swells as its starches gelatinise and the mixture heats during boiling. Leaving room for expansion prevents the cloth or basin from bursting or the pudding from becoming compressed and heavy.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, raisin, sugar, carrot, potato, lemon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, raisin, sugar, carrot, potato, lemon. 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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