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Dessert

English Plum Pudding

A steamed or boiled pudding made with sour milk, butter, suet, eggs, brown sugar, citron, brandy, spices, and flour.

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

English Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine sour milk, butter, suet, eggs, brown sugar, citron, brandy, cinnamon, cloves, pepper, baking soda, and cream of tartar.

  2. Stir in flour until the mixture forms a stiff batter.

Cook

  1. Boil or steam the pudding for 6 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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Cinnamon + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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 the pudding sets during cooking.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that gives a tender crumb.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich during long steaming.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, with molasses flavour and a darker colour.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk and cream of tartar to lift the batter.
Flour
Provides the starch and structure that hold the stiff batter together.

The step that matters

Boil or steam the pudding for 6 hours. Long, gentle moist heat cooks the stiff batter through evenly. Water must be kept at a steady simmer, since a hard boil or dry pot can crack the pudding or scorch it.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, egg, sugar, brandy, cinnamon, pepper):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Clovethe original
  3. Cardamomfits about as well
  4. Allspicefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, egg, sugar, brandy, cinnamon, pepper. 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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