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Dessert

Baked Plum Pudding

A baked pudding made with stale bread crumbs, milk, butter, molasses, spices, eggs, peaches, currants, raisins, and a butter‑flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Baked Plum Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the pudding

  1. Soak the stale bread crumbs in hot water.

  2. Combine 1 cup of crumbs with 1 pint of milk. Add 1 teaspoon of butter, ¼ cup of molasses, 1 teaspoon of salt, ¼ teaspoon of cloves, and ¼ teaspoon of cinnamon. Mix well.

  3. When cool, add 3 beaten eggs, 1 cup of chopped canned peaches, 2 cups of currants, and 2 cups of stoned raisins.

  4. Pour the mixture into an earthen pudding dish.

  5. Cover with a tin lid.

Bake and make the sauce

  1. Bake for 3 hours in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C).

  2. For the sauce, mix 1 small cup of sugar, ⅓ cup of butter, 1 heaping teaspoon of flour, and 1 egg. Stir until smooth.

  3. Add ½ pint of boiling water to the sauce mixture. Add ½ tumbler of melted currant jelly to the sauce mixture.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Cinnamon + peachtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together625 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  4. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Clove + peachtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together280 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the pudding and help it set as it bakes.
Stale bread crumbs
Soak up the milk to give the pudding its body.
Molasses
Adds sweetness and deep color to the pudding.
Currants
Provide chewy fruit pieces and tartness throughout the pudding.
Butter
Adds richness and fat for a tender texture.

The step that matters

Baking the pudding in a covered dish. Baking a long time in a slow oven with the lid on lets the custard set gently and stay moist. Too hot or uncovered, the eggs can curdle or the top can dry out.

Swap the peach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, milk, butter, molasses, clove, cinnamon, egg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Peachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, butter, molasses, clove, cinnamon, egg. 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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