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Dessert

Plum Duff

A steamed plum pudding made with bread crumbs, flour, molasses, sweet milk, suet, raisins, currants, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Plum Duff

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix together the bread crumbs, flour, molasses, sweet milk, baking soda, salt, cloves, cinnamon, and chopped suet.

  2. Add the well-floured raisins and currants to the mixture.

Steam

  1. Steam in a well-greased pan or mold for 2 hours.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Clove + raisintop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together as it steams.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color, and a deep sweetness to the pudding.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses to produce gas that helps the pudding rise.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding rich and moist during steaming.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the pudding.
Currants
Add small bursts of tart sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Flouring the raisins and currants. Coating the fruit in flour helps keep it suspended evenly in the batter instead of sinking to the bottom during steaming.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, flour, molasses, milk, clove, cinnamon, raisin. 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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