Skip to main content
Dessert

English Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with stale bread crumbs, dried fruit, suet, spices, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

English Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Soak the bread crumbs in hot milk until cool.

  2. Add sugar and beaten egg yolks until thick and lemon colored.

  3. Mix in the dredged raisins, currants, figs, citron, and nut meats.

  4. Cream the suet, then add spices and salt, mixing thoroughly.

  5. Stir in the brandy and beaten egg whites until stiff.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered mold, cover tightly, and steam for six 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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Soak up the milk to form the body of the pudding.
Egg yolks
Enrich the batter and help bind it together.
Egg whites
Beaten until stiff, they lighten the batter and give it a airy structure.
Suet
Adds richness and fat that keeps the pudding moist.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavor to the pudding.

The step that matters

Stir in the brandy and beaten egg whites until stiff.. Beaten egg whites hold air only when they are stiff and unbroken; if they are overmixed or deflated, the pudding will be dense. Fold them in gently so the batter keeps its lightness.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, milk, sugar, nutmeg, egg, cinnamon, clove):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Raisinthe original
  4. Applefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, sugar, nutmeg, egg, cinnamon, clove. 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 christmas pudding recipes

Sauce 4Cottage 4Apple 3 See all 175 →

You might also like

Bread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipesOrange Potato BreadOrange Potato Bread80 recipesCinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipes