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Dessert

English Plum Pudding

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and coffee are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,202 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

English Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Soak the bread crumbs in the milk.

  2. Add the egg yolks and all other ingredients, ensuring the fruit is well flavored.

  3. Fold in the beaten egg whites until stiff.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam for 5 hours.

  2. Serve with a liquid 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. Milk + coffeetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,202 recipes

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

  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 + coffeetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together213 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methyl-3-(methyldithio)furan (thiamin, meat).

  5. Milk + beeftop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Soak up the milk and give the pudding its body and soft crumb.
Eggs
Bind the mixture, and the beaten whites add lightness and rise.
Milk
Softens the bread crumbs and keeps the batter moist.
Beef suet
Adds fat that enriches the pudding and keeps it tender.
Raisins
Add sweetness and moisture along with the currants.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the spices and fruit.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. The whites hold air that lightens the pudding. Folding gently keeps that air in, while vigorous stirring deflates the foam and leaves a dense result.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, raisin, beef, egg, coffee, 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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