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Dessert

English Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with milk, eggs, flour, sugar, suet, raisins, currants, citron, cloves, and wine or brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin 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 ↓

English Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine sweet milk, eggs, and enough flour to create a batter.

  2. Stir in sugar, chopped suet, raisins, currants, citron, and cloves.

  3. Add wine, brandy, or lemon for seasoning.

Boil and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a pudding cloth or mold.

  2. Boil for 6 hours steadily.

  3. Serve with 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

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

  4. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  5. Currant + winetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,323 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set firm as the pudding cooks.
Flour
Thickens the batter so the fruit stays suspended and the pudding holds its shape.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the pudding its dark, rich flavor.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and natural sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Boil for 6 hours steadily. The pudding must be kept at a steady boil for the full time so the batter cooks through and sets. If the water drops off the boil, the center can stay wet and heavy, and the pudding may not set properly.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, egg, flour, sugar, raisin, currant, wine):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, flour, sugar, raisin, currant, wine. 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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