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Dessert

Steamed Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with flour, bread crumbs, sugar, milk, raisins, currants, molasses, suet, citron, candied orange peel, spices, baking soda, eggs, served with sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin 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 ↓

Steamed Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the batter

  1. Mix the flour, bread crumbs, sugar, milk, raisins, currants, molasses, suet, citron, orange peel, mace, cinnamon, and baking soda dissolved in a little hot water in a large bowl.

  2. Dredge the fruit in flour before adding it to the mixture.

  3. Beat the mixture well.

Steam

  1. Pour the mixture into a thoroughly buttered mold.

  2. Steam the pudding for 5 to 6 hours.

Serve

  1. Turn the pudding out of the mold.

  2. Pour a little brandy over the pudding.

  3. Light the brandy just before serving.

  4. Serve with hard or liquid 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Raisin + molassestop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the pudding and helps bind the fruit and crumbs.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during steaming.
Fine dry bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the pudding a soft, tender body.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color and rich sweetness.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses to help the pudding rise and lighten.

The step that matters

Buttering the mold thoroughly. Steamed puddings are dense and set firmly over hours, so they can stick to the mold. A well-buttered mold lets the pudding release cleanly when turned out.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, bread, sugar, milk, raisin, molasses, orange. 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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