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Dessert

English Plum Pudding

A steamed or boiled pudding made with bread crumbs, sugar, dried fruit, suet, eggs, milk, spices, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,536 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

English Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine bread crumbs, brown sugar, raisins, currants, citron, and chopped suet.

  2. In another bowl, beat the eggs and mix in the milk, cinnamon, allspice, cloves, and grated nutmeg.

  3. Pour the egg mixture into the dry ingredients and stir well to combine.

Cook

  1. Transfer the mixture into a buttered mold.

  2. Boil the mold for 6 hours or steam it if preferred.

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. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Currant + allspicetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,359 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Eggs
Bind the mixture and help give the pudding its set structure as they cook.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the milk and eggs to form a moist, tender body for the pudding.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich in texture.
Brown sugar
Provides sweetness and a deep, molasses-like flavor.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Boil the mold for 6 hours. Long, gentle cooking in a sealed mold sets the eggs and softens the suet and crumbs into a cohesive pudding. Water must keep the mold fully submerged and at a steady simmer, or the pudding can turn out dry or unevenly cooked.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sugar, raisin, egg, milk, cinnamon, allspice. 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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