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Dessert

A Good Plum Pudding

A custard pudding made with egg, milk, sugar, raisins, and bread, baked until firm.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

A Good Plum Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. In a bowl, whisk together the egg, milk, sugar, salt, and flavoring.

  3. Pour the custard mixture into a small baking dish.

Assemble and bake

  1. Drop in a few seeded raisins.

  2. Dip the slice of bread in the custard to moisten it, then place it on top of the custard.

  3. Dot the bread with additional raisins.

  4. Bake for about 30 minutes, until the custard is firm and smooth.

Serve

  1. Serve the pudding cold.

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. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

  5. Bread + raisintop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,111 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg
Sets the custard so it becomes firm and smooth when baked.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, providing moisture and a soft texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the custard.
Bread
Soaks up the custard to become a moist, tender layer on top.
Seeded raisins
Add sweetness and chewy bursts of fruit throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Bake until the custard is just firm. Egg proteins set as the custard heats. Baking too long or too hot can overcook the eggs, making the custard grainy, watery, or rubbery instead of smooth.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, milk, sugar, bread):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Datesfits about as well
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, sugar, bread. 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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