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Dessert

English Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with sugar, molasses, suet, eggs, dried fruit, spices, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour 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 ↓

English Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, mix sugar, molasses, chopped suet, and eggs until well combined.

  2. Add currants, raisins, citron, candied lemon, candied orange, salt, baking soda, and spices.

  3. Gradually add flour until the mixture is very thick.

  4. Use your hands to mix when it can no longer be stirred with a spoon.

Boil and age

  1. Transfer the mixture into a cloth bag and boil in water for five hours.

  2. For best flavor, let the pudding sit for a few weeks in a cool place before serving.

Serve

  1. To serve, place the pudding in a kettle of boiling water until thoroughly warmed through.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Molasses + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help give the cooked pudding its structure.
Flour
Thickens the batter so the fruit stays suspended and the pudding holds its shape.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color and a deep, caramel-like flavor.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses to lighten the batter and help it rise.
Currants
Provide chewy texture and concentrated fruit sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Boiling the pudding in a cloth bag. The pudding must stay submerged in steadily boiling water for the full five hours so it cooks through evenly; if the water drops or stops boiling, the center stays dense and underdone.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, molasses, egg, raisin, lemon, orange, flour. 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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