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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A steamed dessert made with grated bread, suet, dried fruit, spices, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Coffee and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,202 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

Plum Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix together the grated bread, suet, raisins, currants, coffee sugar, citron, milk, orange marmalade, eggs, flour, baking powder, cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg until well combined.

  2. Transfer the mixture into a well-buttered mold.

Steam and serve

  1. Place the mold in a saucepan with boiling water, ensuring the water reaches halfway up the sides of the mold.

  2. Steam for 3½ hours.

  3. Carefully turn out the pudding onto a dish and serve with wine sauce.

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. Coffee + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,202 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  2. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Raisin + orangetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,684 recipes

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

  5. Coffee + orangetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together326 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (buttery, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and add structure as the pudding sets.
All-purpose flour
Provides the starch and structure that hold the pudding together.
Suet
Adds richness and fat that keeps the pudding moist.
Grated bread
Absorbs liquid and gives the pudding a soft, tender crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas that helps the pudding rise and lighten.
Orange marmalade
Adds sweetness and a bright citrus acidity.

The step that matters

Steam for 3½ hours. Steaming gently and steadily cooks the pudding through without drying it out. The water must stay at a simmer and reach halfway up the mold, so the pudding cooks evenly and stays moist.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, raisin, coffee, sugar, milk, orange, egg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, raisin, coffee, sugar, milk, orange, egg. 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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