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Dessert

English Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with currants, raisins, suet, bread crumbs, citron, eggs, milk, brown sugar, molasses, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

English Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Dredge the currants and raisins with flour.

  2. Combine the currants, raisins, beef suet, bread crumbs, citron, eggs, milk, brown sugar, and molasses in a large bowl, then add mace and nutmeg to taste.

Boil and finish

  1. Boil the mixture in a pudding mold for 6 to 7 hours, turning it several times.

  2. Beat the egg whites and fold them in just before finishing.

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. Currant + raisintop 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 and moisture as they set during cooking.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Bread crumbs
Soak up the milk and eggs to give the pudding its body.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, depth of flavour and a dark colour.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps give a deeper flavour.
Currants and raisins
Add sweetness, chewy texture and moisture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Boil for 6 to 7 hours. The long, steady boil is what cooks the dense batter through. If the heat is too low or the boil is cut short, the centre stays wet and heavy instead of set.

Swap the currant

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

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

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