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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with raisins, currants, citron, sugar, bread crumbs, suet, almonds, apples, lemon peel, brandy, eggs, cloves, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,781 recipes. Both carry 2-nonanone, which smells fruity, floral. The science ↓

Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Prepare the fruit the day before by placing it in a bowl and pouring ⅓ cup brandy over it.

Make and boil the pudding

  1. Add the suet, bread crumbs, a pinch of pounded cloves, and 4 eggs to the fruit mixture and mix well.

  2. Butter a mold and fill it with the mixture, ensuring the mold is secure.

  3. Place a plate at the bottom of a kettle filled three-fourths with boiling water.

  4. Put the pudding in the kettle and boil for 3-4 hours, replenishing the pot with boiling water as needed.

Serve

  1. Turn out the pudding onto a hot dish, sprinkle sugar over it, and pour ⅓ cup warm brandy on top.

  2. Light the brandy when ready to serve.

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 + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 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. Apple + brandytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,291 recipes

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

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 the pudding set as it cooks.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the pudding body and a soft crumb.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it steams.
Raisins
Provide sweetness, chewiness and moisture throughout the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the richness of the fat and fruit.
Brandy
Soaks the fruit, adds aroma, and can be lit for flame at serving.

The step that matters

Keeping the kettle topped up while the pudding boils. Steaming a pudding for hours needs steady, gentle heat. If the water drops and the kettle boils dry, the pudding cooks unevenly and can scorch or turn dense, so the water level must be replenished with boiling water as needed.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, currant, sugar, bread, almond, apple, brandy. 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 →

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