Skip to main content
Dessert

A Plain Plum-pudding

A simple plum pudding made with raisins, suet, flour, and eggs, baked in a water bath.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Raisin and flour 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 ↓

A Plain Plum-pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the raisins, bread crumbs, flour, nutmeg, sugar, and suet.

  2. Beat the yolks and whites of the eggs, removing any specks, then gradually add the milk.

  3. Combine the egg mixture with the dry ingredients and mix until smooth.

  4. Let the batter rest for 30 minutes in a well-buttered mold or basin.

Boil and serve

  1. Tie a cloth tightly over the mold and place it in boiling water.

  2. Boil for 3 hours.

  3. Serve with melted butter flavored with sherry or vanilla, if desired.

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 + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Suet
Adds richness and a moist, tender texture as it melts during boiling.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help give the pudding its set structure.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the pudding body and a soft crumb.
Flour
Provides structure so the pudding holds its shape after boiling.
Muscatel raisins
Add sweetness, chewy texture, and concentrated fruit flavor.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and a molasses-like depth of flavor.

The step that matters

Keeping the cloth tight and water boiling. A loose cloth lets water seep into the mold, diluting the batter, while water that stops boiling slows cooking and can leave the pudding heavy and undercooked.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Allspicefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, bread, flour, sugar, egg, milk, butter. 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.

You might also like

Bread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipesOrange Potato BreadOrange Potato Bread80 recipesBrown Bread PuddingBrown Bread Pudding47 recipes