Skip to main content
Dessert

Plum-pudding, Baked

A baked plum pudding made with eggs, sugar, milk, flour, suet, breadcrumbs, raisins, currants, citron, sherry, nutmeg, salt, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Plum-pudding, Baked

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the egg yolks and sugar together until very light.

  2. Warm the milk and stir half of it into the yolks and sugar.

  3. Stir in the flour until smooth, then add the remaining milk.

  4. Mix in the suet, bread crumbs, and salt.

  5. Add the nutmeg, wine, and baking powder, then stir in the raisins, currants, and citron.

  6. Beat the egg whites with 1 tablespoon sugar to stiff peaks and fold them in last.

  7. Mix well and pour into a well-buttered pudding pan.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the pan in a larger pan of boiling water and bake for 1 hour at 400°F (200°C).

  2. Serve with a wine fruit or custard 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 + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Milk + beeftop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  4. Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Egg whites set on baking and give the pudding its light, airy lift; yolks enrich and bind.
Flour
Forms the starch structure that sets the batter into a firm, cohesive crumb.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender as it cooks.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the liquid and give the pudding its body and soft crumb.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy fruit texture throughout.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, helping the pudding rise and stay light.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites beaten to stiff peaks trap air that gives lift; stirring them in vigorously or late in the mix deflates that foam and leaves a dense pudding.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Marjoramfits less well
  4. Turmericfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, milk, flour, beef, bread, sherry. 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

Bread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipesOrange Potato BreadOrange Potato Bread80 recipesRed Currant JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipes