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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A steamed or boiled dessert made with eggs, dried fruit, suet, bread crumbs, flour, citrus, and sherry.

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

Plum Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a large bowl, combine the eggs, raisins, currants, suet, bread crumbs, flour, citron, sherry or Madeira, milk, ginger, orange peel, and lemon peel, then mix well until all ingredients are combined.

  2. Transfer the mixture into a mold or tie it in a cloth.

Boil

  1. Boil for 6 to 8 hours if using a cloth, or longer if using a mold.

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

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

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Raisin + gingertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,242 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Currant + sherrytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together393 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and give the pudding its set structure as they cook.
White bread crumbs
Absorb the liquids and give the pudding its soft, dense body.
Suet
Adds richness and fat that keeps the pudding moist during long boiling.
Raisins
Provide sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Sherry or madeira
Adds aroma and depth while moistening the mixture.

The step that matters

Boiling time. Boiling for too short a time leaves the centre of a dense, wet pudding undercooked and heavy. The pudding needs a long, steady simmer so heat fully penetrates and sets the eggs and crumbs. Keep the water boiling throughout.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, raisin, currant, bread, flour, sherry, milk. 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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