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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A rich fruit pudding made with raisins, currants, suet, stale bread, eggs, sugar, spices, and liquor, boiled for six hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare all ingredients the day before, except for beating the eggs.

  2. Beat the eggs very light, then mix in half the milk and beat together.

  3. Gradually stir in the flour and grated bread, then add the sugar gradually.

  4. Add the suet and fruit alternately, ensuring the fruit is well sprinkled with flour.

  5. Stir very hard, then add the spices and liquor, followed by the remaining milk.

  6. If the mixture is not thick enough, add more grated bread or flour as needed.

Boil and serve

  1. Dip a pudding cloth in boiling water, shake it out, and sprinkle it lightly with flour.

  2. Lay the cloth in a pan and pour the mixture into it, tying it up carefully to allow room for swelling.

  3. Boil the pudding for six hours, then carefully turn it out of the cloth.

  4. Before serving, decorate the pudding with blanched sweet almonds or slips of citron.

  5. Serve with wine or a sauce made of drawn butter, wine, and nutmeg.

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. 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 + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  5. Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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 add structure as the pudding sets.
Suet
Adds richness and moisture, keeping the pudding tender as it cooks.
Bread or flour
Absorbs liquid and gives the mixture body so it holds together.
Raisins and currants
Provide moisture, sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps flavour the pudding.
Milk
Moistens the mixture and loosens the batter for even cooking.

The step that matters

Leaving the mixture thick enough before boiling. Flour and bread thicken the batter as they absorb liquid. A loose mixture can leak or break apart in the cloth, so it is adjusted until it holds its shape.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Currantthe original

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

More plum pudding recipes

English 165Christmas 156Sauce 71Eggless 34Baked 33Vegetable 19 See all 649 →

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