Skip to main content
Main

English Plum Pudding

A steamed plum pudding made with raisins, currants, suet, bread crumbs, flour, sugar, preserved lemon and orange peel, lemon rind, spices, brandy, eggs, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

English Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Pour the scalded milk over the bread crumbs and let it soak.

  2. In a large bowl, mix the soaked crumbs with the raisins, currants, suet, flour, sugar, preserved peels, lemon rind, salt, nutmeg, and mixed spices.

  3. Add the brandy and eggs, and mix well until combined.

Steam

  1. Divide the mixture into four pudding molds.

  2. Steam the puddings for six hours.

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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  5. Orange + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,746 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the pudding sets while steaming.
Bread crumbs
Soak up the scalded milk and help give the pudding a soft, moist crumb.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich in texture.
Flour
Gives the batter body so the pudding holds its shape when set.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the richness of the fruit and suet.
Raisins
Provide chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Steam the puddings for six hours. Steaming gently and steadily cooks the eggs and starch through without drying the pudding. Letting the water boil dry or cooking too fast can leave the texture uneven or the pudding dense.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, bread, flour, sugar, lemon, orange, nutmeg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, bread, flour, sugar, lemon, orange, nutmeg. 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes