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Dessert

English Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with suet, sugar, bread crumbs, dried fruit, spices, eggs, and milk, served with a butter‑sugar‑cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

English Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Mix suet, brown sugar, bread crumbs, citron, lemon peel, lemon rind, nutmeg, raisins, muscatel raisins, currants, cinnamon, and mace in a large bowl.

  2. Beat eggs well and strain them in another bowl, then add to the dry mixture and combine thoroughly.

  3. Divide the mixture into bowls or molds, cover, and steam for 5 to 6 hours.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt butter in a saucepan, add sugar and cream or milk, then slightly thicken with cornstarch.

  2. Flavor the sauce with vanilla or add brandy if desired.

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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Nutmeg + raisintop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Beef suet
Adds richness and fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender as it steams.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set into a firm, sliceable pudding.
Bread crumbs
Provide bulk and absorb moisture, giving the pudding its body.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a molasses depth of flavor to the pudding.
Cornstarch
Thickens the cream or milk sauce so it coats a spoon.

The step that matters

Steaming the pudding for 5 to 6 hours. Steam must be kept steady and the water replenished so the pudding cooks gently. Too little heat leaves it heavy and underdone, while the egg-set crumb needs time to firm through the center.

Swap the currant

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

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

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