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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A dense, fruit‑laden pudding made with raisins, currants, bread crumbs, flour, suet, citrus, spices, eggs, and brandy, boiled for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pudding mixture

  1. Chop the suet as fine as possible, then mix the suet with the bread crumbs and flour.

  2. Add the washed and dried currants, chopped citron, chopped orange peel, stoned and divided raisins, grated nutmeg, and ground ginger.

  3. Stir in the beaten eggs and brandy until all ingredients are moistened.

Boil

  1. Put the mixture into a buttered mold or cloth and tie it tightly.

  2. Boil for six 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 + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

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

  3. Orange + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,746 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

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 they set during cooking.
Suet
Adds fat and richness, keeping the pudding moist and tender.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the pudding body and a soft texture.
Flour
Adds structure, helping the pudding hold together when boiled.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Tie the mold or cloth tightly. A loose seal lets water enter during the long boil, making the pudding soggy and waterlogged. A tight wrap keeps the moisture and shape in the pudding.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, bread, flour, beef, orange, nutmeg, egg):

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

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