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Dessert

Baked Plum Pudding

A baked dessert made with milk, stale bread crumbs, currants, raisins, citron, butter, sugar, spices, eggs, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By F. L. Gillette and Hugo Ziemann · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Baked Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare ingredients the day before and cover closely.

  2. Grate a loaf of stale bread, or enough to make a pint of crumbs.

  3. Boil one quart of milk and pour the boiling hot milk over the grated bread.

  4. Cover and let steep for an hour.

  5. In the meantime, pick, soak, and dry half a pound of currants, half a pound of raisins, and a quarter pound of citron cut into large slips.

  6. Mix one nutmeg, one tablespoonful of mace, and cinnamon together.

  7. Combine one cupful of sugar with half a cupful of butter.

Make the batter

  1. When the bread is ready, mix it with the butter, sugar, spice mixture, and citron, adding a glassful of white wine.

  2. Beat eight eggs very light.

  3. When the mixture is quite cold, stir the eggs gradually in.

  4. Add the raisins and currants, dredged with flour, by degrees.

  5. Stir the whole mixture very hard.

Bake and serve

  1. Put the mixture into a buttered dish.

  2. Bake for two hours, then serve warm.

  3. Eat with wine sauce, or wine and sugar.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

458Calories
15 gProtein
26 gFat
44 gCarbs

Counts 7 of 8 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 7 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Grape1/2 cup (76g)62
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Nutmeg1 tsp ground (2.2g)12
Cinnamon1 tsp ground (2.6g)6
Macenot 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 F. L. Gillette and Hugo Ziemann. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

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

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

  4. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

  5. Mace + curranttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,791 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set during baking to bind the pudding into a firm, custardy crumb.
Milk
Moistens and softens the grated bread, giving the pudding a moist body.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the hot milk, providing the bulk and soft structure of the pudding.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, tenderising the crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps the surface brown.

The step that matters

Stir the eggs in gradually into a cold mixture. Eggs added to a hot mixture can scramble and curdle, leaving lumps. Cooling the mixture first and adding the eggs slowly lets them blend evenly into a smooth batter that sets uniformly in the oven.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, currant, raisin, butter, nutmeg, 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.

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