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Dessert

American Plum Pudding

A baked pudding made with biscuits, milk, eggs, raisins, lemon brandy, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

American Plum Pudding

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. Pound the biscuits and soak them in enough milk to cover for several hours.

  2. In a bowl, combine the soaked biscuits with 3 pints of milk and beat in 6 eggs.

  3. Add lemon-brandy and grated nutmeg to the mixture.

  4. Fold in the stoned raisins that have been dusted with flour.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for about 2 hours.

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. Biscuit + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together368 recipes

    Shared aroma: maltol (caramel, sweet).

  3. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Nutmeg + raisintop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  5. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 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

Biscuits (crackers)
Soaked in milk, they soften and form the bulk and body of the pudding.
Milk
Provides the liquid that soaks the biscuits and sets with the eggs into a custard.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set during baking, giving the pudding its structure.
Stoned raisins
Add chewy texture and sweetness scattered through the pudding.
Lemon-brandy
Adds aroma and a bright, spirited flavour to the custard.

The step that matters

Baking the mixture. The egg and milk custard sets as it bakes; too high a heat can curdle it and make it grainy, while too little baking leaves it wet in the centre.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Coconutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against biscuit, milk, egg, brandy, nutmeg, raisin, 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.

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