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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with raisins, currants, suet, apples, bread crumbs, spices, flour, eggs, milk, and ginger wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix together raisins, currants, suet, diced apples, bread crumbs, ground ginger, cinnamon, salt, nutmeg, orange peels, and flour.

  2. Beat eggs with brown sugar, then mix in milk and ginger wine.

  3. Combine egg mixture with dry ingredients.

  4. If mixture is too stiff, add a little more milk.

Boil and serve

  1. Divide mixture into bowls and boil for 9 hours, ensuring the water remains boiling.

  2. Before serving, boil the pudding for an additional 3 hours.

  3. Serve with wine sauce.

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 + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Ginger + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture together and add structure as the pudding sets.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the pudding body and a soft crumb.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich during long boiling.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the pudding together.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and molasses flavour, and helps keep the pudding moist.

The step that matters

Keeping the water boiling for 9 hours. Steady, continuous boiling keeps the pudding cooking evenly and prevents it from becoming soggy or undercooked. Water level and heat must be checked throughout the long boil.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, beef, apple, bread, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, beef, apple, bread, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg. 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.

More plum pudding recipes

English 165Christmas 156Sauce 71Eggless 34Baked 33Vegetable 19 See all 649 →

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