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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with raisins, currants, suet, eggs, milk, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Combine raisins, currants, sugar, flour, suet, and salt in a large bowl.

  2. In another bowl, beat the eggs and mix in the milk.

  3. Add the egg mixture to the dry ingredients and stir well.

  4. Fold in the nutmeg, cinnamon, citron, and lemon peel.

Cook

  1. Pour the mixture into a pudding cloth or mold.

  2. Boil for 5 hours in a large pot of water.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during cooking.
Suet
Adds richness and a moist, tender texture as it melts into the pudding.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together after boiling.
Raisins
Add sweetness and moisture to the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps tenderize the crumb.

The step that matters

Boil for 5 hours in a large pot of water. The pudding must stay fully submerged and boil steadily for the whole time. Water that drops below the pudding or stops simmering lets the batter cook unevenly and dry out, and the long steady heat is what sets the eggs and flour into a firm, cohesive pudding.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, sugar, flour, egg, milk, 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.

More plum pudding recipes

English 165Christmas 156Sauce 71Eggless 34Baked 33Vegetable 19 See all 649 →

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