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Dessert

Plum Pudding, Hedgehog

A steamed plum pudding made with stale bread, dried fruit, suet, candied citrus, sugar, eggs, and brandy or ale.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin 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, Hedgehog

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the batter

  1. Mix the grated bread and dried flour in a large bowl.

  2. Add salt, currants, raisins, minced suet, candied fruits, brown sugar, and crushed lemon sugar, then mix thoroughly.

  3. In a separate bowl, combine the beaten eggs with brandy or ale (or milk).

  4. Moisten the dry mixture with the egg mixture until just combined.

Boil and serve

  1. Tie the pudding in a mold or cloth.

  2. Place the tied pudding in a large pan of boiling water.

  3. Boil for 10 hours, ensuring the pudding is fully submerged.

  4. Turn the pudding out of the water.

  5. Cover the top with blanched almonds.

  6. To serve, boil again for 1 hour if stored for later use.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

  4. Bread + beeftop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

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

  5. Raisin + orangetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,684 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

Stale bread
Forms the bulk of the pudding and soaks up the egg and liquid to hold its body.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set during boiling to give the pudding its structure.
Beef suet
Adds richness and fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender as it cooks.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a deeper, molasses-like flavour.
Currants
Provide chewy pockets of sweetness and moisture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Boil for 10 hours, keeping the pudding fully submerged. Long, steady boiling cooks the eggs and starch through slowly and evenly. If the pudding rises above the water, the exposed part dries and cooks unevenly, so it must stay covered throughout.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, flour, raisin, beef, lemon, orange, sugar. 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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