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Dessert

Uxbridge Plum Pudding, Excellent

A steamed pudding made with suet, flour, sugar, mashed potatoes, grated carrots, currants, candied peel, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,107 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Uxbridge Plum Pudding, Excellent

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. In a large bowl, mix the suet, flour, sugar, mashed potatoes, grated carrots, currants, candied peel, and nutmeg thoroughly.

  2. Press the mixture into a buttered basin or mold, filling it completely.

  3. Cover the mold with a saucer and tie it tightly in a cloth.

Boil and serve

  1. Plunge the mold into boiling water and boil quickly for six hours.

  2. A quarter of an hour before serving, remove the pudding from the water and place it in a 350°F (175°C) oven to dry out any moisture.

  3. Serve with wine 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. Potato + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Carrot + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Potato + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + carrottop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,029 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 fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender during long cooking.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the dense pudding together as it cooks.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the pudding its browned, rich flavor.
Mashed potatoes
Adds body and moisture, keeping the mixture soft and light against the dry ingredients.
Currants
Provide chewy pockets of sweet fruit flavor throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Boil quickly for six hours. The mold must stay fully submerged in steadily boiling water for the whole time. Water that drops below a boil cools the pudding unevenly, leaving it heavy and underdone in places.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sugar, potato, carrot, nutmeg):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, potato, carrot, nutmeg. 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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