Skip to main content
Dessert

Plum-pudding, with Rum or Brandt

A steamed plum pudding made with suet, dried fruit, sugar, bread crumbs, apples, lemon peel, cloves, eggs, and rum or brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Apple and clove are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,774 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Plum-pudding, with Rum or Brandt

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a basin, mix the suet, raisins, currants, citron, sugar, bread crumbs, diced apples, lemon peel, cloves, salt, eggs, and rum or brandy.

  2. Butter a pudding mold and fill it with the mixture.

  3. Tie a cloth over the top.

Steam and serve

  1. Place a plate at the bottom of a kettle filled three-quarters with boiling water.

  2. Put the pudding in the kettle and boil for 4 hours, replenishing with boiling water as needed.

  3. Turn the pudding out onto a hot dish, sprinkle with sugar, and pour over warm rum or brandy before lighting it at the table.

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. Apple + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  3. Lemon + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  5. Currant + appletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and help give the pudding its set, custard-like body.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the pudding body and a soft, moist crumb.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it steams.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown and taste rounded.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Keeping the kettle water boiling for the full 4 hours. Steaming needs steady, vigorous heat; if the water drops and is not replenished with boiling water, the pudding cooks unevenly and can turn heavy or dense.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, sugar, bread, apple, lemon, clove, egg. 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 plum pudding recipes

English 165Christmas 156Sauce 71Eggless 34Baked 33Vegetable 19 See all 649 →

You might also like

Apple Bread PuddingApple Bread Pudding21 recipesApple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipes