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Dessert

Vegetarian Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with wholemeal, dried fruit, nut butter, almonds, carrot, apple, and brown sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,245 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Vegetarian Plum Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA warm oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Clean and pick the stalks from the fruit.

  2. Soak the currants and sultanas in a basin, barely covering them with water.

  3. Cover with a plate and place in a warm oven until swollen.

Make the mixture

  1. Rub the nut butter into the wholemeal.

  2. Wash, core, and mince the apples without peeling them.

  3. Grate the carrots.

  4. Mix the wholemeal, nut butter, brown sugar, and ground almonds together.

  5. Add the drained currants and sultanas, then the grated carrot and apple, ensuring to keep their juice.

  6. Do not add any other moisture; it should be moist enough.

Steam

  1. Transfer the mixture into a greased pudding basin.

  2. Boil or steam for 8 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. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Almond + carrottop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together416 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Currant + appletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Carrot + appletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together680 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  5. Butter + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Fine wholemeal
Provides the main structure and body of the pudding.
Nut butter
Adds fat and richness, softening the crumb and carrying flavour.
Ground almonds
Adds body and a nutty texture that keeps the pudding tender.
Sultanas
Add sweetness and moisture as they plump during soaking.
Grated carrot
Adds moisture and natural sweetness, helping the pudding stay moist.
Grated apple
Adds moisture and gentle acidity, with its juice keeping the mixture moist.

The step that matters

Keeping the mixture moist without extra liquid. The fruit is soaked only until swollen and the grated apple and carrot release their own juice. Adding more liquid would make the dense pudding soggy and heavy.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, almond, carrot, sugar, apple):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, almond, carrot, sugar, apple. 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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