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Dessert

English Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with raisins, currants, suet, flour, breadcrumbs, candied peel, spices, eggs, milk, and citrus extract.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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

Prepare

  1. In a large bowl, combine the seeded raisins, sultana raisins, currants, chopped beef suet, flour, bread crumbs, candied lemon peel, candied citron peel, candied orange peel, mixed spices, and a pinch of salt.

  2. In another bowl, beat the eggs and mix in the milk and flavoring.

  3. Pour the egg mixture into the dry ingredients and mix well.

Steam

  1. Grease pudding molds and fill them with the mixture.

  2. Steam the puddings for eight to nine 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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Milk + beeftop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  5. Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and help the pudding set as it steams.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the liquid and give the pudding body and structure.
Flour
Helps thicken the batter so the pudding holds its shape.
Milk
Adds moisture and softens the crumbs into a loose batter.
Raisins
Provide sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Steam the puddings for eight to nine hours. Steaming gently and steadily cooks the eggs and starches through without drying the pudding out. Let the water keep simmering so the pudding cooks evenly over the long time.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, egg, milk, beef, flour, bread, lemon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, egg, milk, beef, flour, bread, lemon. 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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