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Dessert

Steamed Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with beef suet, raisins, flour, milk, molasses, baking soda, salt, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Steamed Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a large bowl, mix the chopped beef suet and raisins.

  2. In another bowl, combine the flour, milk, molasses, baking soda, and salt.

  3. Add the flour mixture to the suet and raisins, and season with nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon, and allspice.

Steam

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered pudding dish and cover tightly.

  2. Steam for 4 hours, ensuring to add boiling water to the kettle as needed without uncovering the steamer.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef suet
Melts during steaming, adding richness and a moist, tender crumb.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy pockets of moisture throughout the pudding.
All-purpose flour
Forms the structure that holds the pudding together as it steams.
Molasses
Adds dark color, sweetness, and a deep, rich flavor.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses's acidity to lighten the batter and help it rise.

The step that matters

Keeping the steamer covered. Lifting the lid releases steam and drops the temperature, which slows cooking and can leave the pudding uneven or dense. Replenishing boiling water through the kettle keeps the steam steady for the full four hours.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Clovethe original
  2. Cardamomfits about as well
  3. Allspicefits about as well
  4. Gingerfits less well

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

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