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Dessert

Old English Plum Pudding

A dense, sweet pudding made with suet, sugar, dried fruit, spices, eggs, and brandy, boiled for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 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 ↓

Old English Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. In a large bowl, combine the suet, brown sugar, raisins, currants, citron, and chopped almonds.

  2. Add the flour, molasses, baking soda, lemon rind, lemon juice, spices, nutmeg, eggs, brandy, and salt. Mix well and add just enough water to form a very stiff dough.

Shape and boil

  1. Divide the mixture into four portions and shape into puddings.

  2. Boil the puddings for ten hours, keeping them covered and ensuring the water remains boiling.

Serve

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

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

  3. Almond + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Raisin + curranttop 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 fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Eggs
Bind the dough and help give the pudding its structure.
Flour
Forms the stiff dough and gives the pudding its body.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color and a deep, sweet flavor.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses to help the pudding lighten and rise.
Dark brown sugar
Sweetens the pudding and adds moisture and caramel flavor.

The step that matters

Keeping the water boiling for the full ten hours. Steady boiling keeps the puddings cooking evenly and sets them through. If the water drops, the pudding cooks unevenly and can turn heavy or soggy, so the pot needs regular checking and topping up with water.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, sugar, raisin, almond, flour, molasses, lemon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, sugar, raisin, almond, flour, molasses, lemon. 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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