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Dessert

Baked Plum Pudding

A baked pudding of bread crumbs, molasses, butter, salt, spices, eggs, peaches, currants, raisins, flour, and suet.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Ithaca (N.Y.) First Baptist Church. Ladies Union · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 23 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Baked Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pudding base

  1. Soak stale bread crumbs in hot water in the proportion of 1 cup of crumbs to 1 pint of milk.

  2. For each cup of crumbs and pint of milk, add 1 teaspoon of butter, 1/4 cup of molasses, 1 teaspoon of salt, 1 saltspoon of cloves, and cinnamon; mix.

  3. When cool, add 3 eggs, well beaten; 1 cup of canned peaches drained from syrup and chopped; 2 cups of currants and stoned raisins mixed; stir.

Bake and make the sauce

  1. Bake the mixture in an earthen pudding dish for 3 hours in a slow oven.

  2. Place a tin cover over the top of the dish during baking.

  3. Make the sauce: combine one small cup of sugar, 1-3 cups of butter, 1 heaping teaspoon of flour, and 1 egg; mix until smooth.

  4. Add boiling water and melted currant jelly to the sauce; stir.

Finish

  1. Mix all together, moisten with milk, allow mixture to stand all night, then boil 6 hours.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

975Calories
30 gProtein
27 gFat
156 gCarbs

Counts 11 of 13 ingredients. The other 2 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 11 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Peach1 medium (150g)59
Molasses1 tbsp (20g)58
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Lemonjuice of 1 lemon (48ml)12
Clove1 tsp ground (2g)7
Cinnamon1 tsp ground (2.6g)6
Salt1 tsp (6g)0
Syrupnot in our table0
Currantnot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Ithaca (N.Y.) First Baptist Church. Ladies Union. 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. See the original page.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Peach + clovetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together280 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Molasses + syruptop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together272 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Milk + peachtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together781 recipes

    Shared aroma: phellandrene (minty).

  5. Molasses + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,483 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the pudding and add structure as they set during cooking.
Bread crumbs (in the method)
Soak up liquid and form the body of the pudding.
Molasses
Adds sweetness and a dark color with rich flavor.
Butter
Adds richness and fat for a tender texture.
Currants
Add fruit flavor and chewy pockets throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Long, gentle baking in a covered dish. Slow heat lets the egg-thickened custard set evenly without curdling or drying out. The tin cover traps steam so the top does not dry or harden before the center is done.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, molasses, peach, syrup, clove, egg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, molasses, peach, syrup, clove, egg. 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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