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Dessert

English Plum Pudding

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,180 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, creamy. The science ↓

English Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine the beef suet, bread crumbs, brown sugar, raisins, currants, and beaten eggs.

  2. Add the sour milk, fruit juice, molasses, citron, lemon peel, orange peel, spices, and grated nutmeg.

  3. Mix in enough flour to create a stiff batter.

Steam and boil

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased mold and tie a white cloth over it.

  2. Plunge the mold into boiling water and boil for six hours or longer.

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 + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

  2. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Raisin + molassestop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Beef + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef suet
Adds richness and moisture, keeping the pudding tender as it cooks.
Bread crumbs
Absorbs liquid and gives the pudding body and a soft, crumbly structure.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set during cooking to hold the pudding together.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and deepens the flavour of the pudding.
Raisins
Provide chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the pudding.
Sour milk
Adds moisture and mild acidity to the batter.

The step that matters

Boil for six hours or longer. A long, steady boil in water that keeps the mold covered cooks the dense batter through and sets its texture. Too short a boil leaves the centre wet and heavy.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, bread, sugar, raisin, egg, milk, molasses. 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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