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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A rich fruit pudding made with suet, almonds, raisins, figs, spices, and wine, baked or steamed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,514 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Flour the fruit thoroughly, using part of the 1 pint of flour.

  2. In a large bowl, pour in the beaten eggs, then add sugar, spices, salt, and wine.

  3. Stir in the dredged fruit, chopped nuts, bread crumbs, and suet alternately until all are used.

  4. Add the last teaspoon of baking soda dissolved in the tablespoon of warm water.

  5. Then add the remaining flour to help the fruit stick together.

Cook

  1. Boil or steam in a mold for four 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. Almond + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  3. Almond + raisintop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  4. Almond + figtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together519 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Cinnamon + figtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together614 recipes

    Shared aroma: cinnamyl acetate (sweet aromatic, cinnamon).

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 structure as they set during cooking.
Flour
Provides structure and helps the fruit stick together in the batter.
Suet
Adds fat and richness, keeping the pudding moist as it cooks.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and add body, giving the pudding a softer crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the wine and acid in the batter to lighten the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the spices and wine.

The step that matters

Adding the baking soda. Baking soda needs an acid to react and lift the batter. It is dissolved in warm water and added after the wine and eggs, so it should be stirred in promptly and evenly to avoid pockets of bitterness and uneven rise.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, almond, bread, sugar, raisin, cinnamon, fig):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, almond, bread, sugar, raisin, cinnamon, fig. 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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