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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A rich dessert made with raisins, currants, suet, butter, bread, flour, eggs, sugar, apples, bourbon, milk, wine, nutmeg, mace, cinnamon, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour 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 ↓

Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and brown sugar together.

  2. Beat the eggs very lightly in a separate bowl.

  3. Add half the milk to the egg whites, then stir in the flour and grated bread.

  4. Add the creamed butter and sugar, then alternate adding the suet and fruit.

  5. Mix in the spices and liquor, then add the remaining milk and stir well.

  6. If the mixture is not stiff enough, add more flour or bread.

Boil

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 batter and help set the pudding as it cooks.
Flour
Provides structure so the pudding holds together when boiled.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the batter.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and deepens the flavor.
Stale bread
Soaks up liquid and gives the batter body.

The step that matters

Checking the stiffness of the mixture. If the batter is too wet, the pudding can turn out loose and fail to hold its shape. Extra flour or bread absorbs the liquid and firms the mixture before boiling.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, beef, butter, bread, flour, egg, sugar. 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 →

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