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Dessert

English Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with milk‑soaked bread, eggs, sugar, dried fruit, suet, spices, and almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 ↓

English Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak enough bread in the milk overnight.

  2. In a large bowl, combine the soaked bread, eggs, sugar, raisins, currants, chopped suet, citron, grated nutmeg, chopped almonds, cinnamon, allspice, and cloves.

Make and cook the pudding

  1. Mix in enough flour to make a stiff batter.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a pudding cloth or mold.

  3. 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 + 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. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  5. Bread + beeftop 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 help it set as it cooks.
Flour
Stiffens the batter so it holds its shape in the cloth or mold.
Beef suet
Adds richness and fat that keeps the pudding moist.
Bread
Soaked in milk, it adds moisture and a soft crumb to the batter.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown slightly as it cooks.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout.

The step that matters

Boil for six hours. The pudding must be sealed tightly in its cloth or mold and kept at a steady boil. Long, gentle cooking sets the eggs and starches through, and water leaking in makes it soggy.

Swap the currant

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

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

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