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Dessert

English Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with suet, sugar, currants, raisins, bread, eggs, and spices, served with a sweet sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,377 recipes. Both carry alpha-terpineol, which smells lilac, floral. The science ↓

English Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pudding

  1. Mix suet, sugar, currants, raisins, soaked bread, beaten eggs, salt, baking powder, and nutmeg in a large bowl until well combined.

  2. Take a square piece of cotton cloth, dip it in scalding hot water, and flour it well.

  3. Place the pudding mixture in the center of the cloth and tie it closely.

Boil and make the sauce

  1. Put the tied pudding in a pot of boiling water and cook for 5 hours, adding boiling water as needed to maintain the temperature.

  2. Cream together the sugar and butter in a bowl for the sauce.

  3. In a separate pot, combine the boiling water and flour.

  4. Mix the flour mixture into the creamed sugar and butter. Adjust flavor to taste.

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

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

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  4. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding rich and moist as it cooks.
Soaked bread
Provides a soft, moist body that holds the dried fruit and binds the pudding.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help give the pudding its set structure.
Currants
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy fruit texture throughout the pudding.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy fruit texture throughout the pudding.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking to lighten the dense pudding.

The step that matters

Keeping the pudding boiling for the full cooking time. The pudding cooks in the boiling water, so the water must stay at a steady boil and be topped up with boiling water. If the temperature drops, the pudding cooks unevenly and can turn heavy and soggy.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, raisin, bread, egg, nutmeg, sauce, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, raisin, bread, egg, nutmeg, sauce, butter. 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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