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Dessert

Steamed Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with buttered crackers, milk, eggs, molasses, raisins, spices, and a sweet sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Steamed Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Soak the buttered crackers in 1 pint of milk overnight.

  2. In the morning, mix in 2 eggs, 2 tablespoons molasses, and ½ cup sugar.

  3. Layer the mixture in a pudding dish, adding cinnamon, nutmeg, and 1 cup of raisins between layers.

  4. Steam the pudding for 2 hours.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, cream together 1 cup sugar, butter the size of half an egg, and 1 egg.

  2. Add a little salt and flavoring to the sauce.

  3. Just before serving, stir in 2 tablespoons of boiling water.

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 + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  3. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  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

Crackers
Soak up milk and bind with the eggs to form a soft, sponge-like body.
Eggs
Set during steaming to give the pudding structure and richness.
Milk
Softens the crackers and provides moisture for a tender, custardy texture.
Molasses
Adds dark color and a deep, sweet, slightly bitter flavor.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness between the layers.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the creamed sauce.

The step that matters

Steam the pudding for 2 hours. Steaming must be gentle and steady so the egg-and-milk mixture sets evenly. Too much heat or boiling water can make it curdle or turn rough and watery.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, egg, molasses, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, sauce):

  1. Raisinthe original
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Blueberryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, molasses, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, 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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