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Dessert

Plum Pudding

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Mix all ingredients together in a large bowl.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a pudding cloth or mold.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil for three hours in a pot of water.

  2. Serve with wine sauce.

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. Raisin + orangetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,684 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Flour
Provides structure so the pudding holds its shape when boiled.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set firm during cooking.
Bread crumbs
Soak up milk and add body, giving a softer, tender crumb.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Currants
Add sweetness and concentrated fruity flavour throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Boiling the pudding. The pudding must stay submerged and boil steadily for the full time. Water that drops below a simmer or lets the cloth float free can leave the centre undercooked and the texture heavy.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Datesfits better
  4. Orangethe original

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