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Dessert

Mother's English Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with suet, bread crumbs, eggs, raisins, currants, candied citrus, spices, brandy, and sweet milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,390 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Mother's English Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit and suet

  1. Keep the suet cold and chop it finely, removing all stringy skin.

  2. Sprinkle the currants with flour, rub them to remove stems, wash in several waters, and dry in the oven.

  3. Combine the chopped suet with the bread crumbs.

Mix the pudding

  1. Beat the eggs and add them to the mixture.

  2. Add the seeded raisins and thoroughly cleaned currants.

  3. Add the finely chopped lemon and citron.

  4. Mix in the sugar and beat well.

  5. Incorporate cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg, mixing thoroughly.

  6. Add the brandy, then the cream of tartar and baking soda moistened with a little sweet milk.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam the mixture in a four-quart mold for four hours.

  2. Serve with old-fashioned brandy 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. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

  3. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it steams.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the pudding its body and structure.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set firm as it steams.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar to lighten the pudding.
Cream of tartar
Acid that reacts with baking soda to produce gas for lift.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture.

The step that matters

Steam the mixture in a four-quart mold for four hours. Steaming gently and steadily cooks the eggs and crumbs into a set, moist pudding. Too little water or heat leaves it dense or underdone, so the mold must stay covered and the water kept simmering for the full time.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, egg, raisin, currant, sugar, brandy, cinnamon):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, egg, raisin, currant, sugar, brandy, cinnamon. 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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