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Dessert

Frozen Plum Pudding

A frozen chocolate custard with raisins, currants, walnuts, citron, candied cherries, candied orange peel, sherry, brandy, cinnamon, vanilla, served with rum‑flavored whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Sherry and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,209 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Frozen Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Make a rich chocolate custard.

  2. Add raisins, currants, walnuts, citron, cherries, and orange peel soaked in sherry for 2 hours.

  3. Stir in brandy, cinnamon, and vanilla.

Freeze and serve

  1. Freeze the mixture.

  2. Serve with whipped cream flavored with rum.

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. Sherry + brandytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Wine + brandytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,427 recipes

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

  4. Chocolate + walnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,548 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-ethyl-2,5-dimethylpyrazine (roasted, nutty).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Chocolate custard
Forms the creamy base that freezes into a rich, smooth texture.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness as they soften in sherry.
Walnuts
Add crunch and a slightly bitter contrast to the sweet custard.
Sherry wine
Soaks the fruit, softening it and adding a fruity, aromatic depth.
Brandy
Adds aroma and alcoholic flavor, and keeps the frozen texture softer.
Whipped cream
Adds a light, cool, fatty contrast to the dense frozen custard.

The step that matters

Soaking the dried and candied fruit in sherry. The fruit must soak long enough to soften and absorb flavor. Unsoaked raisins and peel stay tough and chewy in the frozen custard, and their texture is hard to fix after freezing.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chocolate, raisin, currant, orange, sherry, wine, brandy):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Cocoafits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chocolate, raisin, currant, orange, sherry, wine, brandy. 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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