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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A suet-based pudding made with apples, raisins, currants, sugar, milk, citron, eggs, and flour, boiled in a cloth bag.

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 ↓

Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a large bowl, combine chopped suet, sour apples, raisins, currants, sugar, sweet milk, and citron.

  2. Beat the eggs and mix them into the bowl with the other ingredients.

  3. Add enough flour to make the mixture stick together.

Boil and serve

  1. Place the mixture into a cloth bag and tie it securely.

  2. Boil the bag in a pot of water for three hours.

  3. 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. 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. Apple + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  4. Apple + curranttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Apple + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,920 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

Suet
Adds fat that melts during boiling, keeping the pudding moist and rich.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set firm as it cooks.
Flour
Thickens the mixture so it holds together in the bag.
Sour apples
Add acidity and moisture that balance the sweetness of the dried fruit.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and contributes to the pudding's flavor.

The step that matters

Tying the cloth bag securely. If the bag is loose or lets in water, the pudding can become waterlogged and fall apart. A snug seal keeps the mixture compact and moist during the long boil.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, raisin, sugar, milk, egg, flour. 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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