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Dessert

Plumb Pudding

A boiled pudding made with eggs, flour, sugar, nutmeg, brandy, suet, raisins, and candied peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Plumb Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Break the eggs into a bowl and beat them well.

  2. Gradually add the flour, beating until the batter is smooth and light.

  3. Mix in the sugar, grated nutmeg, and brandy until well combined.

  4. Stir in the suet and raisins, along with the candied peel.

Boil and serve

  1. Butter a basin well and press the pudding mixture into it.

  2. Boil the pudding for five 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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Nutmeg + raisintop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Brandy + raisintop 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
Beaten eggs bind the batter and give it lift and structure as the pudding sets.
Flour
Provides the starch that sets the pudding and gives it body.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich during long cooking.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Lisbon sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps with browning and flavour.

The step that matters

Boil the pudding for five hours. Long, steady boiling cooks the flour and eggs fully through so the pudding sets firm. If the water boils too weakly or dries out, the pudding may turn out heavy or undercooked in the centre.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Apricotfits about as well

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