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Dessert

California Plum Pudding

A steamed suet pudding with raisins, currants, bread crumbs, eggs, sugar, citron, spices, served with a butter‑sugar sauce and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,180 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, creamy. The science ↓

California Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Combine suet, raisins, currants, bread crumbs, eggs, sugar, citron, baking soda, milk, and spices in a large bowl, then mix well until all ingredients are combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

  3. Steam for 6 hours.

Make the sauce

  1. Cream together 2 cups of sugar and ⅔ cup of butter.

  2. Add 1 beaten egg and mix well.

  3. Stir in ½ cup of boiling water and place over a kettle of hot water, stirring until thick and creamy.

Serve

  1. Add a splash of brandy just before serving.

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

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

  2. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Raisin + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides 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 rich and moist as it steams.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help set the pudding's structure as it cooks.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the pudding a soft, tender body.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and adds body to the creamy sauce.
Baking soda
Helps the pudding rise and lighten slightly during steaming.

The step that matters

Stirring the sauce over hot water. Egg in the sauce can scramble if it gets too hot too fast. Gentle, steady stirring over hot water thickens it smoothly into a creamy sauce.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Datesfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, bread, egg, sugar, 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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