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Dessert

Genuine English Plum Pudding

A steamed plum pudding made with bread crumbs, suet, dried fruit, spices, molasses, wine, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 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 ↓

Genuine English Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dry ingredients

  1. Weigh the bread crumbs before drying.

  2. Sift flour and spices together.

  3. Chop the suet and mix into the sifted flour and spices.

  4. Chop the candied fruit finely.

Prepare the fruit

  1. Pick over the currants. Wash the currants in cold water and skim out any sand from the currants.

  2. Pour boiling water over the currants to cover and let them swell.

  3. Soak the table raisins in boiling water for a few minutes. Remove the seeds from the raisins.

  4. Pick over the sultanas. Soften the sultanas in the oven.

  5. Combine all the fruit.

Make the batter

  1. Add the stale, dried, and powdered bread crumbs to the fruit.

  2. Beat the eggs. Mix in the sugar, molasses, and wine with the beaten eggs.

  3. Stir the mixture well with the fruit and chopped suet.

Steam the puddings

  1. Butter three quart-sized tin pails with covers. Divide the pudding mixture between the pails, leaving room to expand.

  2. Steam the puddings for eight hours with water halfway up the sides, using wire tea-stands or a meat rack.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

  4. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Raisin + molassestop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 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

Eggs
Bind the mixture and help give the cooked pudding its set structure.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the pudding body and a soft, tender crumb.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it steams.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark colour and a deep, rich flavour.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture through the pudding.

The step that matters

Steam the puddings with water halfway up the sides. Gentle, steady steam heats the pudding evenly and cooks it through without drying it out. Keeping the water level and the pails off the pan bottom prevents scorching and uneven cooking over the long steaming time.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sugar, raisin, lemon, orange, flour, molasses. 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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