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Dessert

English Plum Pudding

A steamed dessert made with raisins, currants, citron, lemon, suet, brown sugar, bread crumbs, spices, brandy, wine, eggs, and served with brandy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon 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

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Combine raisins, currants, citron, lemon, suet, brown sugar, bread crumbs, nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, mace, allspice, brandy, and wine in a large bowl.

  2. Beat the eggs and add them to the mixture, then mix everything well.

  3. Press the mixture smoothly into a pan.

  4. Cover the pan tightly.

  5. Steam the pudding for 5 hours.

Make the brandy sauce

  1. Cream together 2 tablespoons butter and 1 cup powdered sugar for the brandy sauce.

  2. Add the juice of ½ lemon to the sauce.

  3. Stir in 3 tablespoons boiling water.

  4. Heat the sauce for 2 minutes until steaming hot.

  5. Fold in the stiffened whites of 2 eggs and beat hard.

  6. Remove the sauce from heat.

  7. Pour in ⅓ cup brandy.

Serve

  1. Serve.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Nutmeg + clovetop 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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 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, as whites, add lightness to the sauce.
Suet
Adds richness and moisture, keeping the steamed pudding tender.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the pudding body and structure.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a moist, caramel-like depth of flavour.
Raisins
Provide sweetness, chew and concentrated fruit flavour.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavour to both the pudding and the sauce.

The step that matters

Fold in the stiffened egg whites. Whites hold air only when fully stiffened and folded gently; overbeating them or stirring too hard after the sauce is heated can deflate them and make the sauce heavy.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, lemon, sugar, bread, nutmeg, cinnamon, clove. 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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