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Plum-pudding, Boiled

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Plum-pudding, Boiled

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Warm the milk.

  2. Beat the yolks and sugar together, then stir in half of the milk.

  3. Stir in the flour to make a smooth batter, then add the remaining milk.

  4. Mix in the suet and bread crumbs, then add the fruit.

  5. Stir in the nutmeg, salt, baking powder, and brandy.

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

  7. Pour the mixture into a buttered mold, leaving room for it to rise.

  8. Place the mold in boiling water and boil for 2 hours, ensuring the water does not float the mold.

  9. If the water level drops, replenish with boiling water and keep the pot covered.

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

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

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

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, sugar, flour, beef, bread, raisin. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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