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Dessert

English Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with currants, raisins, suet, flour, sugar, spices, eggs, molasses, and beer.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

English Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ingredients

  1. Wash and pick the currants carefully.

  2. Chop the beef suet very fine.

Mix the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine currants, suet, raisins, flour, sugar, lemon and citron, spices, and nutmeg.

  2. In another bowl, beat the eggs with molasses and warm the beer before mixing.

  3. Mix the wet ingredients thoroughly with the dry ingredients.

  4. Divide the mixture into 2 greased and floured pudding bags or bowls, filling them about ⅔ full.

Steam and serve

  1. Place the bags or bowls in a kettle of water and steam for 12 hours.

  2. To reheat leftovers, steam for 1 hour or slice and heat in the oven.

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. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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 as they set during steaming.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the dense pudding together.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it steams.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, and moisture to the batter.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness.
Currants
Add tart, chewy fruit pieces that give the pudding its character.

The step that matters

Steam the pudding for the full 12 hours. Long, gentle steaming cooks the dense batter through evenly and keeps it moist. Letting the water boil dry or the pot run low can leave the pudding undercooked or scorched, so the water level must be checked throughout.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, raisin, flour, sugar, lemon, ginger, cinnamon):

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, raisin, flour, sugar, lemon, ginger, cinnamon. 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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