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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A traditional British plum pudding made with suet, dried fruit, eggs, spices, and milk, baked in a mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour 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

  1. Chop the suet finely.

  2. Mix the suet with the dry ingredients.

Make and boil the pudding

  1. Stir in the eggs and milk until well combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into a greased quart mold.

  3. Plunge the mold into boiling water and boil for at least 2 hours.

Serve

  1. Turn out the pudding from the mold and serve with brandy sauce.

  2. For a festive touch, light brandy poured around the pudding before serving.

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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Nutmeg + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

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

  4. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Suet
Adds richness and moisture, and keeps the pudding tender as it steams.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set firm as it cooks.
Bread crumbs
Soak up the milk and give the pudding body and a soft crumb.
Flour
Adds structure so the pudding holds together when turned out.
Currants
Provide concentrated sweetness and chewy fruit throughout the pudding.
Stoned raisins
Provide concentrated sweetness and chewy fruit throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Boil for at least 2 hours. The pudding must be kept at a steady boil for the full time so the egg and flour mixture cooks through and sets. Under-steaming leaves it dense and wet in the centre.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, egg, nutmeg, ginger, bread, flour, milk):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, egg, nutmeg, ginger, bread, flour, milk. 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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