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Dessert

A Baked Plum Pudding

A sweet pudding made with milk, bread, currants, raisins, citron, spices, butter, suet, eggs, and wine, baked for two hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Eliza Leslie · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,377 recipes. Both carry alpha-terpineol, which smells lilac, floral. The science ↓

A Baked Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bread and milk

  1. Grate all the crumb of a stale six cent loaf.

  2. Boil a quart of rich milk, and pour it boiling hot over the grated bread.

  3. Cover it, and let it steep for an hour.

  4. Set it out to cool.

Prepare the fruit and spices

  1. In the meantime, prepare half a pound of currants, picked, washed, and dried.

  2. Prepare half a pound of raisins, stoned and cut in half.

  3. Prepare a quarter of a pound of citron cut in large slips.

  4. Beat two nutmegs to a powder.

  5. Powder a tablespoon of mace and cinnamon and mix together.

  6. Crush with a rolling‑pin half a pound of sugar.

  7. Cut up half a pound of butter.

Mix and bake

  1. When the bread and milk is uncovered to cool, mix with it the butter, sugar, spice and citron.

  2. Add a glass of brandy and a glass of white wine.

  3. Beat eight eggs very light.

  4. When the milk is quite cold, stir the eggs gradually into the mixture.

  5. Add, by degrees, the raisins and currants (which must be previously dredged with flour) and stir the whole very hard.

  6. Put the mixture into a buttered dish.

  7. Bake it for two hours.

  8. Serve warm, and eat with wine sauce or with wine and sugar only.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

702Calories
41 gProtein
41 gFat
42 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 7 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Beef100g cooked250
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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Milk + beeftop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  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 and help give the baked pudding its set structure.
Bread crumb (in the method)
Soaked in hot milk, it absorbs liquid and gives the pudding its body.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving a tender crumb and rich flavor.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps browning as the pudding bakes.
Currants
Add sweetness and chewy fruit pieces throughout the pudding.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy fruit pieces throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Stirring the eggs into the milk. If the milk is still warm, the eggs can scramble or cook unevenly, so the milk must be quite cold before the eggs are stirred in gradually.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, raisin, sugar, butter, beef, 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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