Skip to main content
Dessert

Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with suet, molasses, sour milk, raisins, flour, spices, baking soda, sugar, butter, cream, and optional flavoring.

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

Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, mix the suet, molasses, sour milk, raisins, flour, cloves, and cinnamon.

  2. Let the mixture stand for 2 to 3 hours.

  3. Stir in the baking soda until well combined.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold and steam for 2.5 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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Suet
Adds richness and a moist, tender crumb as it melts during steaming.
Molasses
Adds dark color, moisture and deep sweetness with a robust flavor.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with baking soda to help the pudding rise and softens the crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together as it steams.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk and molasses to produce gas that lightens the batter.
Raisins
Add chewy pockets of concentrated sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Stirring in the baking soda. Baking soda reacts with the acid in the sour milk and molasses to release gas. If it is stirred in late, unevenly, or the batter is left to stand too long afterward, the pudding may rise poorly or come out dense.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (molasses, milk, raisin, flour, cinnamon, sugar, butter):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits about as well
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Allspicefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, milk, raisin, flour, cinnamon, sugar, butter. 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 →

You might also like

Molasses CookiesMolasses Cookies96 recipesMolasses CakeMolasses Cake90 recipesCinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesClove CakeClove Cake53 recipes