Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓
Plum Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare the plums
Stew the plums and remove the pits.
Sweeten the plums and pour them into an earthen pudding dish.
Add the batter
In a bowl, mix the cream or milk, egg, baking powder, and enough flour to create a thick batter.
Cover the plums with the batter or a soft biscuit dough.
Cook and serve
Steam for 1 hour or bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.
Invert the pudding onto a plate and serve with hard sauce.
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.
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Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Plum + flourtop 19% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together777 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together30,481 recipes
Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).
Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Plums
- Provide the fruit base and moisture that cooks down beneath the batter.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the plums and adds flavour to the fruit.
- Cream or milk
- Adds fat and richness, softening the batter's texture.
- Egg
- Binds the batter and helps it set as it cooks.
- Baking powder
- Releases gas during cooking so the batter rises and lightens.
- Flour
- Gives the batter structure so it holds together as it sets.
The step that matters
Covering the plums with batter. The batter must be thick enough to hold its shape over the fruit. If it is too thin, it can sink into the plums and cook unevenly, so the pudding may not hold together when inverted.
Swap the plum
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, cream, egg, flour):
- Raisinfits better
- Vanillafits better
- Figfits better
- Plumthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream, egg, flour. 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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