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Dessert

Plain Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made from stale bread, milk, molasses, sugar, raisins, currants, citron, and optional beef suet.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Plain Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Soak the broken bread in milk until fully absorbed, then drain thoroughly.

  2. Work out as much milk as possible with a spoon.

  3. If using, add the beef suet.

  4. Stir in the molasses, brown sugar, raisins, currants, and citron.

  5. Boil in a mold or pudding bag.

Serve

  1. Serve with wine 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. Raisin + flourtop 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. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Molasses + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread
Soaks up milk and forms the soft, bulky body of the pudding.
Molasses
Adds dark color, moisture, and a deep, sweet flavor.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and deepens the flavor.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness.

The step that matters

Work out as much milk as possible. Excess liquid left in the bread makes the pudding heavy and wet after boiling, so squeezing out the milk helps it hold together with a light, firm texture.

Swap the currant

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

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

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