Skip to main content
Dessert

Old English Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with raisins, currants, suet, flour or breadcrumbs, sugar, lemon peel, mace, nutmeg, ginger, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

Make the pudding

  1. Combine raisins, currants, suet, flour or bread crumbs, sugar, lemon peel, mace, nutmeg, and ginger in a large bowl.

  2. Add the eggs and mix well.

  3. Tie the mixture in a cloth, leaving room for it to swell.

Cook

  1. Boil the pudding for 5 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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Nutmeg + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Suet
Adds fat that melts during boiling, keeping the pudding moist and rich.
Eggs
Bind the mixture together and help give the pudding its set structure.
Flour or bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the mixture body so it holds its shape.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture through the pudding.
Currants
Add tart, concentrated fruit flavor and chewy texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the richness of the suet.

The step that matters

Tie the mixture in a cloth, leaving room for it to swell. The pudding expands as it cooks and absorbs water. If it is tied too tightly, it may burst or become dense, so room must be left for the mixture to rise and swell.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, flour, sugar, lemon, mace, nutmeg, ginger):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, flour, sugar, lemon, mace, nutmeg, ginger. 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 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesGinger CookiesGinger Cookies213 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes