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Dessert

English Plum Pudding

A steamed plum pudding made with suet, bread crumbs, raisins, currants, fruit, spices, molasses, wine, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

English Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Dredge the fruit (raisins, currants, and citron) with flour.

Mix the batter

  1. In a large bowl, mix the brown sugar, beaten eggs, bread crumbs, chopped suet, and spices.

  2. Add the black molasses, orange juice, lemon juice, wine, and brandy to the mixture.

  3. Fold in the dredged fruit and sliced almonds.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered mold and steam for 6 hours.

  2. Serve hot with a rich sauce.

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. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  3. Orange + cinnamontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Orange + gingertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,833 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

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 add structure and lift as the pudding sets.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and gives it a rich, tender texture.
Bread crumbs
Provide body and absorb the liquids, giving the pudding its crumb.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, with a deeper flavor than white sugar.
Black molasses
Adds dark color, sweetness, and a robust, slightly bitter depth of flavor.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Dredging the fruit before folding it in. Flour coats the fruit so it is less likely to sink to the bottom of the batter and more evenly distributed through the pudding.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg, molasses, bread, orange, ginger, cinnamon):

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, molasses, bread, orange, ginger, cinnamon. 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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