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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

  1. In a large bowl, combine the raisins, currants, sugar, flour, and suet.

  2. Add the eggs and milk, mixing well.

  3. Stir in nutmeg, cinnamon, and salt.

  4. Fold in the citron and lemon peel.

Cook

  1. Pour the mixture into a pudding mold.

  2. Cover and boil for 5 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. 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 mixture and help give the pudding its set structure as it cooks.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich in texture.
Flour
Provides starch that helps the pudding hold its shape when cooked.
Raisins
Add natural sweetness and chewy moisture throughout the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps with browning and flavor.

The step that matters

Cover and boil for 5 hours. The pudding must be tightly covered and boiled steadily for the full time so the eggs and flour set through and the texture stays moist. Letting the water boil dry or stop short leaves the centre undercooked or dense.

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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