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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with raisins, currants, suet, bread crumbs, candied peel, apples, nutmeg, salt, eggs, milk, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,377 recipes. Both carry alpha-terpineol, which smells lilac, floral. The science ↓

Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Whip the eggs and add the milk.

  2. Stir in the bread crumbs and thicken with flour to make a batter stiff enough to hold a spoon.

  3. Add all the other ingredients and mix thoroughly.

Prepare the cloth and boil

  1. Dip a pudding cloth in boiling water, rub it with lard, and dust it well with flour.

  2. Place the pudding in the cloth, tie securely, and boil for 8 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 + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

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

  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. Apple + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  5. Currant + appletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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 boiling.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the pudding a light, soft body.
Suet
Adds fat that enriches the texture and keeps the pudding moist.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give a tender, rich crumb.
Flour
Thickens the milk and egg mixture so the batter holds its shape.

The step that matters

Tying the pudding in the cloth. The cloth must be floured and tied snugly so the pudding keeps its shape and the batter does not swell and leak. Too loose a tie lets water in during the long boil, making the pudding soggy.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, sugar, bread, apple, nutmeg, egg, milk. 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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