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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A baked plum pudding with raisins, citron, cake or bread, custard, and frosted glaze.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit and dish

  1. Stew the raisins and citron together.

  2. Grease a dish with butter.

Layer and bake

  1. Layer cake or bread in the dish.

  2. Add a layer of fruit.

  3. Repeat layering until all ingredients are used, finishing with cake or bread on top.

  4. Pour custard made from milk and egg yolks, sweetened to taste, over the layers.

  5. Bake until a knife inserted shows the milk has thickened.

Frost and brown

  1. Beat egg whites and mix in powdered sugar to make frosting.

  2. Spread frosting on the pudding.

  3. Return to the oven until browned.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Boil white sugar and water for sauce.

  2. Add butter and cornstarch mixture to the sauce, boiling for a few moments.

  3. Stir in beaten egg whites and vanilla essence before serving.

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  5. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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
Egg yolks thicken the milk custard, and whites whip into the frosting that sets and browns on top.
Milk
Forms the custard that sets around the cake or bread as the pudding bakes.
Cake or bread
Forms the soft base layers that soak up the custard and hold the fruit.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness to the layers.
Cornstarch
Thickens the sauce when boiled with the milk mixture.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the egg white frosting so it holds and browns well.

The step that matters

Bake until the custard is just set. Egg custard sets as its proteins coagulate with heat. Underbaking leaves it runny, while overbaking makes it curdled and rubbery, so the knife test matters.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, bread, milk, egg, sugar, vanilla):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, bread, milk, egg, sugar, vanilla. 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 →

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