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Dessert

Plain Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with flour, suet, raisins, currants, breadcrumbs, spices, eggs, and treacle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin 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 ↓

Plain Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Finely mince the suet and mixed peel.

  2. Wash and dry the currants, stone the raisins, and cut them in half.

Mix the batter

  1. In a large bowl, mix the flour, breadcrumbs, brown sugar, and suet.

  2. Add the currants, raisins, lemon zest, baking soda, salt, and mixed spice. Mix thoroughly.

  3. Beat the eggs and add a little milk.

  4. Stir the lemon juice and treacle into the dry mixture.

  5. Combine with the egg and milk to form a soft paste, adding more milk if needed.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased basin and steam or boil the pudding for 4 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Raisin + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the pudding together as it cooks.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it steams.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb liquid and give the pudding a light, tender crumb.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set firm during steaming.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic lemon juice and treacle to lighten the texture.
Treacle
Adds sweetness, dark colour and moisture to the pudding.

The step that matters

Steam the pudding for the full 4 hours. Steaming gently cooks the thick mixture through without drying it out. Letting the water boil dry or cutting the time short can leave the centre dense and underdone.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, raisin, sugar, lemon, milk, egg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, raisin, sugar, lemon, milk, 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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