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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A dense, sweet pudding made with suet, dried fruit, sugar, bread crumbs, flour, eggs, milk, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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 ↓

Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine the beef suet, raisins, currants, brown sugar, bread crumbs, lemon peel, and flour.

  2. In another bowl, beat the eggs and mix in the milk.

  3. Add the egg mixture to the dry ingredients and stir well. Season with nutmeg and cloves to taste.

Cook

  1. Transfer the mixture into a stone jar.

  2. Place the jar in boiling water and cook for 10 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. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  3. Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  4. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef suet
Provides fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set into a firm, cohesive pudding.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and add body, giving the pudding structure.
Flour
Adds structure by thickening the batter as it cooks.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a molasses flavor that deepens during cooking.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Keeping the water boiling for the full cook. The pudding is cooked gently in boiling water over a long time. If the water drops and stops simmering, the batter cooks unevenly and the texture of the pudding suffers. Keep the water at a steady boil throughout.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, raisin, sugar, bread, lemon, flour, egg. 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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