Skip to main content
Dessert

Old-fashioned Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with bread crumbs, flour, suet, raisins, currants, sugar, candied peel, baking powder, eggs, salt, spice, and molasses.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and raisin 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 ↓

Old-fashioned Plum Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix the bread crumbs with enough milk or water to moisten.

  2. Combine all ingredients in a large bowl.

  3. Grease a pudding bowl and fill it with the mixture.

  4. Tie a cloth firmly over the top, leaving room for the pudding to swell.

Cook and store

  1. Boil for 6 hours.

  2. Store in a cool place; it can be reboiled later.

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. Flour + raisintop 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. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Raisin + molassestop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the bulk of the structure, setting as the pudding cooks.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set firm when cooked.
Baking powder
Releases gas to lighten the pudding and help it rise as it swells.
Suet
Adds fat for richness and a moist, tender crumb.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark colour and a deep, slightly bitter flavour.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Tie the cloth firmly, leaving room to swell. The pudding expands as it cooks and the baking powder releases gas. A cloth tied too tightly leaves no room for expansion, which can crack the pudding or make it dense, while a loose seal lets water into the pudding during boiling.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, flour, raisin, currant, sugar, egg, molasses. 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 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes