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Dessert

English Plum Pudding

A steamed plum pudding made with raisins, currants, flour, breadcrumbs, eggs, and spices, traditionally served at Christmas.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

English Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine the raisins, seedless raisins, currants, flour, bread crumbs, candied citron, salt, and mixed spice.

  2. Add the beaten eggs and enough new milk to create a stiff batter, mixing until thoroughly incorporated.

Cloth and boil

  1. Prepare a strong pudding cloth by rubbing the outside with butter to prevent sticking.

  2. Fill the cloth with the batter, leaving room for expansion, and tie it tightly with stout twine.

  3. Place a plate in the bottom of a kettle to avoid burning, and boil the pudding for at least 7 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve the pudding in a large dish, heated with spirit poured over it, and light it with writing paper.

  2. Decorate with 3 or 4 sprigs of holly with berries.

  3. Serve last at dinner with lights lowered until cut.

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. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 add structure and richness as they set during boiling.
Flour
Provides the starch that gives the pudding its body and firm, sliceable texture.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and lighten the batter, giving a softer, tender crumb.
Raisins
Add sweetness, moisture and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Currants
Add concentrated sweetness, moisture and tart fruit flavour throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Boiling the pudding for at least 7 hours. Long, steady boiling cooks the dense batter through and sets it firmly. Keeping the water at a steady simmer and not letting the cloth run dry prevents an undercooked or uneven pudding.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, flour, bread, egg, milk. 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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