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Dessert

English Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with milk‑soaked crackers, suet, raisins, currants, eggs, spices, sugar, and molasses.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

English Plum Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the crackers in the milk overnight.

Mix and steam

  1. In the morning, add the chopped suet, raisins, currants, eggs, spices, sugar, and molasses to the soaked crackers. Mix well until combined.

  2. Steam the mixture for 5 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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Crackers
Soaked in milk, they soften and bind the pudding into a moist, cohesive mass.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set firm as it cooks.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding rich and tender as it steams.
Molasses
Adds dark sweetness and moisture, with a deep, rich flavor.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and natural sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Mix well until combined. Thorough mixing spreads the eggs, fat and spices evenly through the soaked crackers, so the pudding cooks uniformly and has no pockets of dry or loose batter.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, raisin, egg, clove, cinnamon, mace, nutmeg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, raisin, egg, clove, cinnamon, mace, 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.

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