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Dessert

Baked English Plum Pudding

A baked pudding made with milk, bread crumbs, suet, raisins, currants, citron, spices, and lemon peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove 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 ↓

Baked English Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the pudding

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a large bowl, combine the milk, bread crumbs, brown sugar, chopped suet, eggs, raisins, currants, citron, cinnamon, cloves, and lemon peel. Mix well until all ingredients are combined.

  3. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake for 3 hours.

  2. For the sauce, beat together 2 cups of sugar, 1 cup of butter, and 1 teaspoon of vanilla until very light.

  3. Grate nutmeg over the top before serving.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

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

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

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and help set the pudding as it bakes.
Bread crumbs
Provide the bulk and soft body that holds the pudding together.
Milk
Moistens the bread crumbs and keeps the pudding tender as it bakes.
Suet
Adds fat that gives the pudding richness and a moist texture.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture through the pudding.

The step that matters

Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold. Greasing the mold keeps the pudding from sticking when it is turned out. The mold also shapes the pudding as it bakes and sets.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, bread, sugar, egg, raisin, cinnamon, clove. 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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