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Dessert

Cheap Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with suet, raisins, molasses or sugar, sour milk, flour, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Cheap Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Combine the chopped suet, chopped raisins, molasses or sugar, sour milk, flour, baking soda, ground cinnamon, ground cloves, and salt in a large bowl.

  2. Mix until well combined.

  3. Transfer the mixture to a greased pudding mold.

Steam

  1. Cover the mold with a cloth and steam for 3 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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the pudding together as it cooks.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk and molasses to produce gas that lightens the pudding.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich in texture.
Molasses or sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps with browning and flavour.
Sour milk
Its acidity activates the baking soda and adds tenderness.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy pieces throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Steaming for the full time. The pudding sets through gentle, steady heat over a long period. Cutting the steaming short leaves the centre dense and wet, while the mold must stay covered so steam, not air, cooks it.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, molasses, milk, flour, cinnamon):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits about as well
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Allspicefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, molasses, milk, flour, cinnamon. 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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