Why it works: Milk and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓
Plum Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Pour milk over bread crumbs and let stand 30 minutes.
Mix and cook
Combine soaked bread crumbs, sugar, suet, raisins, lemon peel, and eggs in a large bowl.
Beat mixture well until fully combined.
Transfer mixture to a pudding mold and boil for 5 hours.
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.
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Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together11,466 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
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Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together12,481 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together22,662 recipes
Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
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Raisin + lemontop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together3,742 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,155 recipes
Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Bread crumbs
- Soaked in milk, they form the bulk and soft body of the pudding.
- Eggs
- Bind the mixture together and help it set firm as it cooks.
- Suet
- Adds richness and fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and contributes to the pudding's flavor and color.
- Raisins
- Provide chewy pockets of concentrated sweetness throughout the pudding.
The step that matters
Beating the mixture well. Thorough beating spreads the eggs, suet and soaked crumbs evenly, so the pudding cooks uniformly and does not set in uneven pockets or streaks.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, bread, sugar, raisin, egg):
- Vanillafits better
- Figfits better
- Datesfits better
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against milk, bread, sugar, raisin, egg. 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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