Name: Plum Pudding, Plain
Ingredients: 6 ounces suet, finely shredded; 1 pound flour; ¼ pound currants; ¼ pound raisins; ½ teaspoon salt; 1 teaspoon baking powder; ¾ pint milk; 3 tablespoons treacle

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, Plain

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

In a bowl, mix the suet, flour, currants, raisins, salt, and baking powder thoroughly.
Dissolve the treacle in the milk and stir it into the dry ingredients.

Boil and finish

Tie the mixture in a cloth and boil for 3 hours until cooked through.
Add spices and sugar to taste 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.

Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,075 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together6,180 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).
Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Raisin + milktop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,155 recipes

Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).
Currant + milktop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together5,475 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

Flour and milk 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

Flour: Forms the main structure that holds the pudding together as it cooks.
Suet: Adds fat that keeps the pudding rich and moist and gives it a tender texture.
Baking powder: Releases gas during cooking, helping the pudding rise and become lighter.
Treacle: Adds sweetness, dark colour and moisture, along with a deep molasses flavour.
Milk: Hydrates the flour and dissolves the treacle, giving the mixture a soft, moist batter.

The step that matters

Boiling the tied pudding for the full 3 hours. Boiling heats the pudding evenly through the cloth. If it is boiled for too short a time, the centre stays doughy because the flour starch and the raising agent have not fully set.

Swap the currant

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

Vanillafits better
Figfits better
Coconutfits better
Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, raisin, milk. 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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Plum Pudding, Plain