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Dessert

Yankee Plum Pudding

A steamed suet pudding with molasses, raisins, walnuts, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Yankee Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the suet

  1. Remove tissue and stringy parts from the suet and chop it very finely.

  2. Work the chopped suet to a cream with your hands.

Make the batter

  1. Add the molasses to the suet and mix well.

  2. Sift together the flour, baking soda, spices, and salt.

  3. Add the dry ingredients alternately with the milk, reserving enough flour to dredge the raisins and walnuts.

  4. Mix everything well and pour into buttered molds.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam the pudding for three hours.

  2. Serve with Brandy Sauce.

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 + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Cinnamon + walnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Suet
Adds richness and a tender, moist crumb as it melts during steaming.
New orleans molasses
Provides sweetness, dark colour and a moist, deep flavour.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the pudding together.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses acidity to lighten the batter.
Sweet milk
Hydrates the flour and binds the batter into a pourable mixture.

The step that matters

Pour the batter into buttered molds. Molds must be buttered so the pudding releases cleanly after steaming. The batter should be mixed well first so the baking soda and flour are evenly distributed and the pudding rises evenly.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Walnutthe original
  4. Beansfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, milk, flour, raisin, cinnamon, meat, clove. 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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