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Dessert

Plum, Without Eggs

A moist, eggless plum bread pudding made with grated bread, suet, currants, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,057 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Plum, Without Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix the grated bread, suet, flour, currants, brown sugar, and brandy together.

  2. Add enough milk to form a stiff batter.

Cook

  1. Boil the mixture in a cloth for 4 hours.

Alternative

  1. Alternatively, bake it by adding ½ pound of stoned raisins and a little candied orange and lemon peel.

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. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Brandy + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,738 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Grated bread
Provides the body and structure that holds the pudding together as it absorbs liquid.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Flour
Helps bind the mixture and firm up the batter.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a deeper, molasses-like flavor.
Currants
Add concentrated sweetness and fruity chewiness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Forming the stiff batter. Grated bread soaks up liquid, so the milk must be added gradually. Too little leaves the pudding dry and crumbly, while too much makes it wet and heavy once cooked.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, flour, sugar, brandy, 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.

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