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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A steamed or baked pudding made with suet, bread crumbs, flour, eggs, milk, raisins, currants, candied peel, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Mix the bread crumbs, flour, and suet together in a large bowl.

  2. In another bowl, beat the eggs well and add the sweet milk and baking soda.

  3. Combine the egg mixture with the suet and flour mixture, mixing thoroughly.

  4. Stir in the currants, raisins, candied orange peel, candied lemon peel, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt.

Cook

  1. Pour the mixture into a cloth, tie it securely, and boil for six hours.

  2. Alternatively, pour into a greased pudding mold and bake at 350°F (175°C) for nearly two 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. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Beef + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  5. Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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 fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender.
Stale bread crumbs
Absorb the liquid and give the pudding a light, soft body.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the pudding together as it cooks.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidity of the mixture to help it rise and lighten.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Securing the cloth or mold. If the cloth is not tied tightly or the mold is not sealed, water can enter during boiling and the pudding becomes soggy. Steady, gentle heat then cooks the batter through evenly.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, beef, bread, flour, egg, milk, orange):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, beef, bread, flour, egg, milk, orange. 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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