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Dessert

Poor Man's Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with suet, raisins, currants, milk, molasses, flour, bread crumbs, baking soda, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Poor Man's Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine suet, raisins, currants, milk, molasses, flour, bread crumbs, baking soda, and salt, then mix well until all ingredients are combined.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a pudding mold or heatproof bowl.

Steam

  1. Steam the pudding for 2 to 3 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 + 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. Raisin + molassestop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour 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

Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender as it cooks.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together after steaming.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the pudding a soft, light body.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture and a deep, dark color and flavor.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses's acidity to produce gas that helps the pudding rise.
Milk
Hydrates the dry ingredients so the batter forms a moist, cohesive mixture.

The step that matters

Steaming the pudding. The pudding cooks gently by steam, so the mold must be sealed and the water kept simmering. If steam escapes or the water boils dry, the pudding dries out and cooks unevenly.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, milk, molasses, flour, bread):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, milk, molasses, flour, bread. 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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