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Dessert

Boiled English Plum Pudding

A boiled pudding made with flour, suet, raisins, currants, citron, eggs, brown sugar, molasses, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 ↓

Boiled English Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. In a large bowl, combine flour, suet, raisins, currants, citron, eggs, brown sugar, molasses, salt, and spices. Mix well until all ingredients are combined.

  2. Transfer the mixture into a pudding cloth or mold and secure tightly.

  3. Boil in a large pot of water for 5 hours.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, melt butter in a saucepan, add flour, and cook for a few minutes.

  2. Stir in sugar and flavoring to taste, and cook until thickened.

Serve

  1. Serve the pudding warm with the 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 + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together as it cooks.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich in texture.
Eggs
Bind the dried fruit and flour and help set the pudding.
Raisins
Add sweetness, chewy texture and moisture to the pudding.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a caramel-like depth of flavor.
Molasses
Adds dark color, moisture and a rich, slightly bitter sweetness.

The step that matters

Boiling the pudding for 5 hours. The pudding must be sealed tightly and kept at a steady simmer with enough water; if the water boils dry or the cloth leaks, the pudding cooks unevenly and can turn out dense or soggy.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, beef, raisin, egg, sugar, molasses, sauce. 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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