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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with bread crumbs, flour, sugar, suet, dried fruit, apples, figs, spices, eggs, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Stone the raisins and clean the sultanas and currants.

  2. Chop the apples, figs, mixed peel, almonds, and suet.

Mix and fill

  1. Mix all the dry ingredients together well.

  2. Add the baking powder, brandy, and eggs to the mixture.

  3. Pour into a well-greased bowl or cloth.

Boil and serve

  1. Boil for 6 hours.

  2. Hang up the pudding, and when ready to serve, boil for an additional 4 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Apple + figtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together238 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Raisin + figtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together737 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

  5. Bread + figtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together374 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and add structure as the pudding sets.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the pudding a soft, moist body.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich in texture.
Baking powder
Releases gas that helps the pudding rise and lighten.
Barbadoes sugar
Adds sweetness and a deep molasses flavour.

The step that matters

Pour into a well-greased bowl or cloth. Grease keeps the pudding from sticking to the container so it releases cleanly after the long boil. The container must also leave room for the pudding to expand while it cooks.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, flour, sugar, raisin, apple, fig, lemon):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pearfits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, flour, sugar, raisin, apple, fig, lemon. 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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