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Dessert

Fine English Boiled Plum Pudding

A boiled plum pudding made with citron, currants, raisins, suet, flour, sugar, eggs, wine, brandy, milk, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Fine English Boiled Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the citron and combine it with the currants, brown sugar, flour, beef suet, raisins, and salt in a large bowl.

  2. Beat the egg yolks in a separate bowl. Add brown sugar to the beaten yolks.

Mix and boil

  1. Mix in the milk. Mix in the flour alternately with the other ingredients.

  2. Pour the mixture into a pudding cloth that has been wet in boiling water.

  3. Boil the pudding for 5 to 6 hours.

Serve

  1. Before serving, dip the pudding in cold water to prevent sticking.

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. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Wine + brandytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,427 recipes

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

  4. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

  5. Raisin + brandytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,768 recipes

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

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 richness and structure as they set during boiling.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich during long boiling.
Flour
Provides the starch structure that holds the pudding together as it cooks.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and a deeper caramel flavour.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture through the pudding.
Currants
Add tart, concentrated fruit flavour and chewy texture.

The step that matters

Pour the mixture into a pudding cloth that has been wet in boiling water.. A hot, wetted cloth keeps the pudding from sticking and helps it hold its shape while the dense batter boils for hours.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, flour, beef, raisin, egg, wine, brandy):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, beef, raisin, egg, wine, brandy. 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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